Okay, I can already see the responses forming in peoples minds - Pavolv? Seriously? Everybody knows about Pavlov... this can't have been enough to blow a mind! And you'd be right. Everybody does know about Pavlov, including me, so in today's lecture I was not expecting to get anything particularly new out of it.
I'm even pretty sure that if you haven't heard of Pavlov's experiments you know about the effect of Classical Conditioning. If you've ever got food poisoning and then couldn't even stand the smell of the food that gave it to you, months or years later then you've been conditioned in the same way that Pavlov's dogs were. Still doesn't sound familiar? Here comes a really brief explanation...
Pavlov was actually a Physiologist who was studying the digestive systems of dogs, to be specific measuring the gastric juices being produced. Pavlov would give present them with food and they would product gastric juices. At the same time that the dogs were given food there was a noise like a bell that came from the machine that gave them food. One day as Pavlov pressed the button for the food to be given to the dog, the noise like a bell happened but no food appeared... yet the dogs still produced gastric juices.
Thus Pavlov was given the idea of Classical Conditioning in which the pairing of an unconditioned stimulus (the presence of food) with a conditioned stimulus (the bell noise) illicited the unconditioned response of gastric juices, so that when you took away the unconditioned stimulus (the food) the dogs still illicited the response of getting their stomach juices ready for food.
It's pretty much the bread and butter of Behavioural Psychology, and so far, no mind-blowing action, it was all as I knew it.
The kicker - Pavlov didn't use a bell... ever.
He noticed the pairing between food and his presence not the sound of a bell.
Okay, it's not that mind blowing. I had a better mind-blowing experience from a few weeks back but I wanted start with something light.
Give me your thoughts about Pavlov or maybe even times that you've tried Operant Conditioning in your life.
I'll be back soon with more things that blew my mind.
I'm even pretty sure that if you haven't heard of Pavlov's experiments you know about the effect of Classical Conditioning. If you've ever got food poisoning and then couldn't even stand the smell of the food that gave it to you, months or years later then you've been conditioned in the same way that Pavlov's dogs were. Still doesn't sound familiar? Here comes a really brief explanation...
Pavlov was actually a Physiologist who was studying the digestive systems of dogs, to be specific measuring the gastric juices being produced. Pavlov would give present them with food and they would product gastric juices. At the same time that the dogs were given food there was a noise like a bell that came from the machine that gave them food. One day as Pavlov pressed the button for the food to be given to the dog, the noise like a bell happened but no food appeared... yet the dogs still produced gastric juices.
Thus Pavlov was given the idea of Classical Conditioning in which the pairing of an unconditioned stimulus (the presence of food) with a conditioned stimulus (the bell noise) illicited the unconditioned response of gastric juices, so that when you took away the unconditioned stimulus (the food) the dogs still illicited the response of getting their stomach juices ready for food.
It's pretty much the bread and butter of Behavioural Psychology, and so far, no mind-blowing action, it was all as I knew it.
The kicker - Pavlov didn't use a bell... ever.
He noticed the pairing between food and his presence not the sound of a bell.
Okay, it's not that mind blowing. I had a better mind-blowing experience from a few weeks back but I wanted start with something light.
Give me your thoughts about Pavlov or maybe even times that you've tried Operant Conditioning in your life.
I'll be back soon with more things that blew my mind.
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