Pavlov's dogs: Classical Conditioning

Pavlov's Dogs:Classical Conditioning

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• Legenda: Sample: 35 dogs, a variety of breeds, raised in kennels in the lab.

Aims

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• To find out if a reflexive behaviour can be produced in new situations through learning.
• To see if associating a reflex with a neutral stimulus causes learning to take place, producing a conditioned reflex in new situations.

Procedure

• Pavlov controlled extraneous variables by placing each dog in a sealed room that didn't allow them to see, smell or hear anything outside of the room. Each dog was strapped into a harness to stop it form moving around and it's mouth was linked to a tube that drained saliva away into a measuring bottle.
• In the control condition, Pavlov presented the dogs with food through a hatch, to which the dogs salivated. Pavlov also presented the dogs with the neutral stimulus sound, to which they did not salivate, showing that the sound was indeed a neutral stimulus.
• In the experimental condition, the sound was paired with the presentation of the food. This was repeated around 20 times for each dog. Pavlov then presented the sound with no food.
• The amounts of saliva produced were measured in a tube by multiple people to ensure they were being measured correctly.
• Classical Conditioning:
• Unconditioned stimulus (food) = Unconditioned response (salivation)
• Unconditioned stimulus (food) + Neutral stimulus (sound) = Unconditioned response (salivation)
• Conditioned stimulus (sound) = Conditioned response (salivation)

Results and Conclusions

• Results:
• The conditioned dog started to salivate 9 seconds after hearing the sound.
• By 45 seconds, the conditioned dog had produced 11 drops of saliva.
• Conclusions:
• Pavlov had used Classical Conditioning to produce a conditioned reflex.
• Pavlov explained that the brain learns to see the sound as a 'signal' and links the reflex to it.
• This is how animals in the wild learn to hunt / escape being hunted: they learn to apply their reflexes to new situations based on previous experiences.

Evaluation

• Strengths:
• The Theory of Evolution supports the idea that humans will learn through association, like animals do.
• Pavlov practised good science; he used a standardised procedure, objective measures (saliva) and his results had inter-rater reliability. This also makes his study reliable.
• We condition dogs in real life eg. house training or teaching them to sit.
• May have helped to formulate the ethical guidelines we have in place today.
• Weaknesses:
• Humans and dogs have different brains and so it is difficult to generalise form dogs to humans. Humans have complicated thoughts and motives - they don't only think about food.
• Lab experiment - highly artificial which means it has low ecological validity. Eg. those dogs were raised in labs, not like most dogs.
• This experiment was highly unethical and could not be done today with the ethical guidelines we now have in place.