Title: Pavlov's Dogs and Classical Conditioning - Psychologist World
Headings: Pavlov's Dogs and Classical Conditioning
Pavlov's Dogs and Classical Conditioning
How Pavlov's experiments with dogs demonstrated that our behavior can be changed using conditioning.
Pavlov's Dog Experiments
Did You Know?
Experiment Procedure
'Unconditioning' through experimental extinction
Recovery
Forward Conditioning vs Backward Conditioning
Delay Conditioning vs Trace Conditioning
Temporal Conditioning
Generalisation
Modern Classical Conditioning

Content: CONDITIONED STIMULUS (CS, eg. tone) > CONDITIONED RESPONSE (CR, eg. salivation)
The implications for Pavlov's findings are significant as they can be applied to many animals, including humans. For example, when you first saw someone holding a balloon and a pin close to it, you may have watched in anticipation as they burst the balloon. After this had happened multiple times, you would associate holding the pin to the balloon with the 'bang' that followed. Like Pavlov's dogs, classical conditioning was leading you to associate a neutral stimulus (the pin approaching a balloon) with bursting of the balloon, leading to a conditioned response (flinching, wincing or plugging one's ears) to this now conditioned stimulus. Similarly, Craik and Lockhart's Levels of Processing (1972) theory on memory suggests that the deep processing (e.g. repeated rehearsal) of a piece of information can lead to an increased likelihood that it will enter a person's long-term memory and the response that can be recalled at a later date 3. In Depth
Craik & Lockhart (1972) Levels of Processing Theory
Traditional theories of memory segmented human memory into different stores. Learn more
Let us look now at some of the nuances of Pavlov's findings in relation to classical conditioning. 'Unconditioning' through experimental extinction
Once an animal has been inadvertently conditioned to produce a response to a stimulus, can this association ever be broken?