Food would be presented and the amount of saliva measured. A bell would be rung and the amount of saliva measured. In a typical experiment done by Pavlov, the dog would be strapped in a harness with an apparatus that allowed precise measurement of the amount of saliva it produced. He tested this by associating the ringing of a bell with the food so that the dogs would salivate when they heard the bell and spent many years studying the factors that affected the speed and strength of learning of this association as well as how it might explain apparently complex behaviour like neurosis in humans.

He observed that his dogs salivated when his assistants opened the doors to their cages and inferred that they must have learned to associate the opening of the doors with food. After the two have been presented together many times, the new stimulus should produce the response even if the original stimulus is not present.Ĭlassical conditioning was discovered by Ivan Pavlov while he was studying salivation in dogs. The new stimulus is presented at the same time as another stimulus that already produces the response. We guess Pavlov's Metronome or Pavlov's House Of Dog Torture didn't quite ring as well as 'bell'.Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an existing involuntary reflex response is associated with a new stimulus. The dogs associated the sound of the food with the metronome, and began to salivate when they heard it, despite the non-presence of food, which he termed a 'conditional reflex'.Īfter this horror show, which heavily influenced psychology and behavioralism as we know it today, Pavlov is now remembered for a much gentler telling of that experiment, with an instrument he never used. Pavlov used a metronome, setting it going just before the dogs were fed (or at least, before they chewed some food before it plopped out of their neck hole). Pavlov conducted experiments on this, associating different stimulus with the presence of food. They would salivate at the site of the coated assistants alone, whether food was present or not. They were placed on an angle so that they were facing a bowl of mince meat in front of them, which the dog would eat (before it fell out of their neck holes onto a collection plate).ĭuring this research, Pavlov noticed that the dogs would begin to salivate whenever they saw the white lab coat of his assistant on their way to give the dogs food. To make extra money, he also hired an assistant to gather up gastric juices from the ' gastric juice factory': five large dogs harnessed to a crossbeam and attached to a container by a tube coming out of their fistulas.

Fistulas (holes) placed further along the digestive system, attached to tubes, allowed him to collect, measure, and study the gastric juices to his heart's content.Īs an added bonus, he also gathered up gastric juices from dogs in his lab and sold it in Russia, France and Germany as a cure for indigestion. When the dogs ate, it would simply fall out of the hole and not make it to the stomach. To this end, he removed the esophagus of his lab dogs, and created a hole in their throat. Pavlov was initially interested in the effect of eating on pancreatic, gastric and salivary excretions, rather than the experiment he became forever known by. First off, Pavlov's method of measuring salivation was a lot more invasive than simply noticing Mr Floofels is drooly.

Pavlov psychology