Pavlovian Conditioning

Pavlovian Conditioning

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849 and died February 27, 1936. The son of a priest, his education began in a theological seminary. Inspired by the ideas ofD. I. Pisarev and I. M. Sechenov abandon his religious career to devote his life to science.

This gentleman was studying digestion in dogs, and discovered classical conditioning. What is thatclassical conditioning? It is one of the most important phenomena of psychology and is one of the simplest types of learning. Pavlov experiment with a dog, which had a device, connected to the mouth tomeasure salivary secretions. Many environmental stimuli produce reflex responses that have not been learned. In my opinion the influence of the stimuli and reflexes were the greatest contribution ofPavlov to classical conditioning. Example, the presence of food in the mouth produces saliva. Stimulus that produce these responses are called unconditional stimulus (US), and the responses are known asunconditional responses (UR). Other stimulus is neutral since they do not cause reflex responses. Example the sound of a bell not causes salivation. Classical conditioning occurs when a neutralstimulus acquires the ability to produce the UR, it has been repeatedly associated with the US. For example, if you ring a bell every time you give food to your dog, after a few times he will associate thesound of the bell with food and salivate every time I listen. The neutral stimulus that has acquired the ability to produce the reflex response is called conditioned stimulus (CS). The conditionalresponse (CR) is the response produced by the CS after the US relate. “Each pairing of CS and US is one trial, and the procedure is known as Palovian or classical conditioning (Chance, 2008, p.64)”Moises Gonzalez

Reference
Paul Chance (2008). Learning and Behavior (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
The Nobel Foundation. (1904). Ivan Pavlov: Biography. Retrieved from...