Thursday, June 24, 2010

Ivan Pavlov and Classical Conditioning

From Psych 101, i immediatly became interested in Pavlov's classical conditioning experiment dealing with the salivation in dogs. I enjoyed learning about how one action directly leads to a certain reaction, and how it can be related in humans. It seems like people always ask, "why do we do what we do?" and Pavlov pioneered the research into that answer. He was originally testing the digestion and salivary glands in dogs when food was presented. He correlated it to teaching the dog that the sound of a bell meant he would be recieving food, and was pleasantly suprised when he discovered that the ringing of the bell eventually made the dog salivate as much as the actually presentation of food. Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Peace Prize in the early 1900s for his work in classical conditioning.

1 comment:

  1. Probably the most common person associated with classical conditioning. One the best known and the best experiments always start off as accidents or as an experiment for something else!

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