Ivan Pavlov is amongst the earlies scientists who carried out behavioral research. Pavlov's work has helped shape psychological investigations even in today's world. His classical conditioning experiment carried out on dogs sparked interest in other scientists who consequently carried out behavioral studies in humans. Prominent among these researchers is John B. Watson, who came up with the concept of behaviorism (Reimann, 2018). Part of these behavioral studies included classical conditioning in humans. Pavlov’s work comes across as quite interesting to me due to his keen observance and curiosity. Through keen observation, Pavlov realized the stimulus that made the dogs salivate and out of curiosity tested whether the dogs would respond similarly to a different stimulus. He demonstrates the traits of a good researcher, ardent, and meticulous, by taking time to study the learning behavior in dogs.
Pavlov is credited as having discovered the classical conditioning theory. Pavlov was researching digestive systems when he noticed that upon putting meat into a dog's mouth, the act would necessitate salivation. He also noticed that other stimuli also made the dog salivate. These included the sight of the serving dish used to feed the dog, the presence of a person feeding the dog, and the door closing sounds when food was delivered. Pavlov picked out that there was an association with these stimuli and the food and that that the dogs had come to learn their response behavior. Later the learning of behaviors as a response to different stimuli came to be known as classical conditioning.
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By making differentiation of what stimuli were unconditioned and conditioned triggers, Pavlov carried out an experiment that demonstrated the learning behavior using conditioned stimulus. In the dogs' research, food was an unconditioned stimulus that is innate and thus would automatically trigger an unconditioned response through salivation. In Pavlov’s experiment, he used to ring a bell as the stimulus that was to train the dogs to respond to it. Previously, bell sounds had no association with dogs’ salivation rather than merely awakening them. However, upon pairing the bell sounds with food delivery, the dogs learned a conditioned response to the bell sounds. Rather than at earlier times when the dogs could not salivate upon hearing the bell sounds, the dogs became responsive to the bell sounds and could salivate upon hearing the sounds. However, an important aspect that came up out of this experiment is that the classical conditioning must involve unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus. The two must be used together. Conditioned triggers, when used on their own, cannot train a responsive behavior. Pavlov referred to a conditioned response to be the conditioned reaction obtained after behavior training using a combination of unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus. He also stated that the conditioned response might be equally as strong as the unconditioned response, or at times it may be weakened.
Pavlov’s experiment gave meaning to the different phases in classical conditioning. The first phase of this training process is acquisition. The acquisition is the learning process of the correlation between the conditioned triggers and unconditioned triggers when they are used in combination. In the dog's experiment, food an unconditioned stimulus was paired with a bell sound, which was a conditioned stimulus. During this phase, the conditioned trigger should severally and routinely be presented before the unconditioned trigger is presented. Two aspects, contiguity and contingency, encompass the acquisition phase. In contiguity, the conditioned trigger and the unconditioned trigger should be introduced in close time proximity. The close time enables the participant to learn to associate the conditioned trigger with an unconditioned response. The ringing of the bell close to offering food made the dogs regard the bell sounds to be a signal that food was on its way. The contingency aspect in conditioning helps to assure the participant that conditioned trigger is a sure sign that the typical unconditioned trigger is on its way (Kringelbach and Berridge, 2016). The conditioned stimulus should not be presented haphazardly with no association to the unconditioned stimulus during the training process to allow the learning behavior.
Another essential aspect of classical conditioning is generalization. Generalization is the inclination to react to a different trigger, which is identical to a conditioned stimulus, and the response is analogous to the conditioned response. In the dog's experiment, whistling provided a similar response as the bell sounds. Generalization s helpful in averting the conditioning process from only being tied to one stimulus. Discrimination is also an essential aspect of the conditioning process by helping train responses only to specific triggers. It allows participants to distinguish the different stimuli, thus enhancing the behavior learning process. In Pavlov’s experiment, food was only offered after the bell sounds and not any other sounds.
In his experiment, Pavlov also demonstrated that the learned behavior could become extinct if the unconditioned trigger is absent. By ringing the bell and not offering any food, subsequently, the dogs' conditioned response weakened and stopped drooling. The conditioned stimulus is powerful only as long as the unconditioned stimulus is still present. However, the conditioned response was also found to spontaneously reappear even after a period of not exhibiting the conditioned response. Taking of the dog back to the laboratory and ringing the bell with no food being offered made the dog drool. Spontaneous recovery has been defined as the reoccurrence of a conditioned response after a period of extinction without any extra conditioning being provided (Thompson, McEvoy, and Lipp, 2018). Failure to present the unconditioned stimulus combined with the conditioned trigger wears out the strength of the spontaneous recovery, and the conditioning may ultimately end. Moving into a new environment may resuscitate the conditioned response through the renewal process (Anderson and Petrovich, 2015). Renewal is also typical in humans; for example, getting an anxiety disorder on seeing a train for someone who lost a loved one through a train accident.
Pavlov’s experiment helped demonstrate the learning of behaviors through conditioning. Although Pavlov carried out his research in dogs, his findings are synonymous with behavior learning in human beings, including the association of specific triggers with food. Conditioned behaviors are quite difficult to extinguish due to the possibility of their reoccurrence or renewal.
In today’s world, Pavlov’s invention of classical conditioning theory has been quite helpful in psychology. The theory has been used by different researchers to investigate human behavior. One useful utilization of Pavlov’s theory is in drug and substance abuse. The theory has been used to study the learning of the drug and substance abuse up to the point of addiction (Brewer, Elwafi, and Davis, 2014) . The various stages in classical conditioning theory, namely, acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, and renewal are quite synonymous with the different phases in drug and substance abuse. The acquisition phase represents the initial stage when one gets introduced to drug use. The extinction process has been used in rehabilitation settings to help addicts recover. Spontaneous recovery is also seen when rehabilitated addicts encounter certain situations that trigger the drug abuse phase, and they may find themselves using the drugs once more (Brewer, Elwafi and Davis, 2014) . Renewal phase in classical conditioning is also evident when the addicts move into a setting similar to their initial drug usage setting, thus predisposing them to drug use.
Pavlov’s research into the learning of conditioned behavior has proved to be quite useful in carrying out subsequent studies involving animal and human behavior. The findings of the research are quite applicable in today’s world phenomenon exhibited by humans in different situations. Pavlov's demonstrated that once a conditioned behavior was learned, it was not very easy to eliminate the practice.
References
Anderson, L. C., & Petrovich, G. D. (2015). Renewal of conditioned responding to food cues in rats: Sex differences and relevance of estradiol. Physiology & behavior , 151 , 338-344.
Brewer, J. A., Elwafi, H. M., & Davis, J. H. (2014). Craving to quit: Psychological models and neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness training as treatment for addictions.
Kringelbach, M. L., & Berridge, K. C. (2016). 'Neuroscience of reward, motivation, and drive. Advances in Motivation and Achievement: Recent Developments in Neuroscience Research on Human Motivation, eds S.-I. Kim, J. Reeve, and M. Bong (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing) , 23-35.
Reimann, A. (2018). Behaviorist Learning Theory. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching , 1-6.
Thompson, A., McEvoy, P. M., & Lipp, O. V. (2018). Enhancing extinction learning: Occasional presentations of the unconditioned stimulus during extinction eliminate spontaneous recovery, but not necessarily reacquisition of fear. Behavior research and therapy , 108 , 29-39.
