Pavlov's puppies!

Did I get your attention with the word puppies?! Ok so the famous name of this study is better known as Pavlov's Dogs, but I like the word puppies better. That's just silly me.

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist. He is most known for his work with dogs and conditioning them to behave a certain way ("classical conditioning"). Ever since his early childhood and all through his life, he demonstrated great intelligence. Amazingly (and like many topics of psychology), Pavlov discovered classical conditioning by accident.

If you have a dog, think about what they do when they see food (your's or their's).

Yes, that's right. Drool. EVERYWHERE. This is what interested Pavlov. Whenever he entered his lab, even when he was not bringing food, his dogs got excited and started salivating. Normally, this is the reaction we get when we come home to our beloved pets...

VERY EXCITED :)

First, let me just brief over Pavlov's experiment and then I will tell you about an experience I've had with classical conditioning.

There are several terms that i want to identify before starting: 

unconditioned stimulus: something that causes a first, natural, UNCONDITIONED reaction

neural stimulus: initially produces no certain response

unconditioned response: natural behavior due to a given stimulus

conditioned stimulus: this was previously the neural stimulus

conditioned response: produced in response to the conditioned stimulus

Let me apply these to some situations and they will make a lot more sense.

In Pavlov's experiment, before he started conditioning the dogs, he tested the neural stimulus, which in Pavlov's case, was a bell. There was no reaction from the dogs. Then, he tried the unconditioned stimulus which was the dog food. The dogs started salivating in response to the food (unconditioned stimulus and response: food, salivation). Then, it was time for the conditioning. 

Pavlov combined the neural stimulus (bell) and unconditioned stimulus (food) to elicit an unconditioned response from the dog: salivation. Pavlov would ring the bell and give the dog the food. Now, time for the last part of the experiment. After conditioning, the bell (first neural, now conditioned stimulus) would elicit drool from the dog, which became the conditioned response. Makes sense, right? Let me relate this to my own experience.

Several years ago, my aunt and uncle hosted Christmas at their house. My aunt and uncle made this little bacon wrapped little hot dogs with powdered sugar on them. I probably had a few too many, but I ended up getting sick. Now, whenever someone talks about bacon wrapped mini hot dogs, I feel nauseous and think of the ones that made me sick. So in my case, the unconditioned stimulus is the sickness I got from them. The unconditioned response was the nausea. The neural stimulus (and then the conditioned stimulus) are the bacon wrapped hot dogs. The conditioned response is the nausea (or uneasy feeling) that occurs because of talking or thinking about those hot dogs. 

Does that make a little more sense? I hope so. It does take a little bit of thinking, but once you put the terms to use, it is very simple to understand.

Pavlov was very smart in recognizing this in dogs and he was even smarter to keep testing out his theory. This paved the way for how we see conditioning today. 

I hope you enjoyed reading about this! Check back next time!

References

McLeod, S. (2007, January 1). Pavlov's Dogs | Simply Psychology. Retrieved April 14, 2015, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/pavlov.html

VSSF. (2013, March 20). Retrieved April 14, 2015, from http://www.vetspecialistsofsfl.com/vssf/tag/drool/

ADORABLE PUPPY EXCITED TO SEE OWNER. (2014, December 20). Retrieved April 14, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rncPvrUCvBE