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Pavlov'S Dogs: Saul Mcleod

Pavlov's research on classical conditioning began when he noticed that dogs in his lab would salivate not only when presented with food, but also when they heard the footsteps of his assistant who brought them food. He discovered that any neutral stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus like food could become a conditioned stimulus that elicited the same response. Through systematic experimentation with stimuli like metronomes and food, Pavlov found he could condition responses in dogs and outlined the basic principles of classical conditioning.

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185 views5 pages

Pavlov'S Dogs: Saul Mcleod

Pavlov's research on classical conditioning began when he noticed that dogs in his lab would salivate not only when presented with food, but also when they heard the footsteps of his assistant who brought them food. He discovered that any neutral stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus like food could become a conditioned stimulus that elicited the same response. Through systematic experimentation with stimuli like metronomes and food, Pavlov found he could condition responses in dogs and outlined the basic principles of classical conditioning.

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joseph
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Pavlov's Dogs

By Saul McLeod, updated 2018

Like many great scientific advances, Pavlovian conditioning (aka classical conditioning) was
discovered accidentally.

During the 1890s, 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.

Pavlovian Conditioning
Pavlov (1902) started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn.
For example, dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever they see food. This reflex is ‘hard-wired’ into
the dog.

In behaviorist terms, food is an unconditioned stimulus and salivation is an unconditioned


response. (i.e., a stimulus-response connection that required no learning).

Unconditioned Stimulus (Food) > Unconditioned Response (Salivate)

In his experiment, Pavlov used a metronome as his neutral stimulus. By itself the metronome did
not elecit a response from the dogs.

Neutral Stimulus (Metronome) > No Conditioned Response


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.

Conditioned Stimulus (Metronome) > Conditioned Response (Salivate)

So the dog had learned an association between the metronome and the food and a new behavior
had been learned. Because this response was learned (or conditioned), it is called a conditioned
response (and also known as a Pavlovian response). The neutral stimulus has become a
conditioned stimulus.

Pavlov found that for associations to be made, the two stimuli had to be presented close together
in time (such as a bell). He called this the law of temporal contiguity. If the time between the
conditioned stimulus (bell) and unconditioned stimulus (food) is too great, then learning will not
occur.

Pavlov and his studies of classical conditioning have become famous since his early work
between 1890-1930. Classical conditioning is "classical" in that it is the first systematic study of
basic laws of learning / conditioning.

Summary

To summarize, classical conditioning (later developed by Watson, 1913) involves learning to


associate an unconditioned stimulus that already brings about a particular response (i.e., a reflex)
with a new (conditioned) stimulus, so that the new stimulus brings about the same response.
Pavlov developed some rather unfriendly technical terms to describe this process. The
unconditioned stimulus (or UCS) is the object or event that originally produces the reflexive /
natural response.
The response to this is called the unconditioned response (or UCR). The neutral stimulus (NS) is
a new stimulus that does not produce a response.

Once the neutral stimulus has become associated with the unconditioned stimulus, it becomes a
conditioned stimulus (CS). The conditioned response (CR) is the response to the conditioned
stimulus.

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