PSY 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Ivan Pavlov, Classical Conditioning, Psy
4 May 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Psy 001
COS
Fall
General Psych
Class 13
● Initial discovery of classical conditioning by Pavlov:
○ Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936) was the personification of a committed
scientist
○ By the time of his most successful work on classical conditioning, he was in his
fifties and had already received a Nobel Prize for the study of the reflexes
involved in digestion
○ His work has so overshadowed his life that he is said to have scarcely noticed
events like the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 that fundamentally changed his
country
○ A former co-worker (Gantt, 1975, quoted by Hothersall, 1995) recalled Pavlov's
furious scolding of an assistant who came 10 minutes late to start the experiment:
"But Professor," screamed the assistant, "there's a revolution going on, shooting in
the streets"
○ What's the difference when you're working in the laboratory
○ The next time a revolt takes place
○ Pavlov's initial understanding of what we now call classical conditioning
originated from his earlier observations of dog gastrointestinal reflexes
○ Using permanently inserted tubes to capture salivary and stomach juices from
dogs, he and his team of researchers have found, for example, that a dog salivates
differently when different kinds of food are put in its mouth
○ Juicy meat causes a very thick saliva; dry bread, a soft saliva; and acidic fluids, a
salty one
○ In a fine-grained study, these reflect three different reflexes, with three different
stimuli producing measurably different salivary secretions
○ Pavlov experienced a problem in the course of these studies
○ Dogs who had been fed on previous occasions in Pavlov's experiments would
salivate before they received any food
○ Apparently, the signals that constantly accompanied the food, such as the sight of
the food or the sound associated with its delivery, alerted the dogs to the coming
stimulus and caused them to salivate
○ At first Pavlov was happy to view it simply as a source of experimental error
○ He named it "psychic secretion," meaning that it was beyond the area of research
of the physiologist, and tried to eradicate it by finding ways of placing food in the
mouth of the dog without warning
○ But then it occurred to Pavlov that this could well be a phenomenon that could be
tested physiologically
○ Rather than call it psychic secretion, he might consider it a reflex and objectively
analyze it, just as he had analyzed the reflexive salivary response to food in the
mouth
○ This insight led Pavlov (1927/60) to his first experiments on conditioned reflexes
Document Summary
Ivan petrovich pavlov (1849 1936) was the personification of a committed scientist. By the time of his most successful work on classical conditioning, he was in his fifties and had already received a nobel prize for the study of the reflexes involved in digestion. His work has so overshadowed his life that he is said to have scarcely noticed events like the bolshevik revolution of 1917 that fundamentally changed his country. A former co-worker (gantt, 1975, quoted by hothersall, 1995) recalled pavlov"s furious scolding of an assistant who came 10 minutes late to start the experiment: "but professor," screamed the assistant, "there"s a revolution going on, shooting in the streets" What"s the difference when you"re working in the laboratory. The next time a revolt takes place. Pavlov"s initial understanding of what we now call classical conditioning originated from his earlier observations of dog gastrointestinal reflexes.
