Classical Conditioning: Pavlov Flashcards
Aim
To explore conditioned reflexes.
Explaining the role of conditioned reflexes in eating behaviour of dogs.
Explore how salivation becomes associated with new stimuli unrelated to food and the properties of this association.
Procedure
Experimental procedure involving collecting saliva from salivary glands of an immobilised dog.
Done in a laboratory so saliva production could be easily observed and measured by volume or amount of drops.
What was the DV
Salivation
Where did the procedure take place?
A soundproof chamber to minimise the effects of extraneous variables like noise.
How did he establish a baseline?
Measuring salivation in response to NS like buzzer, then pair NS with UCS of food around 20 times.
Pavlov Variations
Varied the presentation so NS was presented before of after the UCS.
Further variations were used to investigate extinction and spontaneous recovery of salivation e.g. NS, now a CS, was presented several times without UCS, producing extinction.
Findings
NS like bell did not initially elicit a salivation response, whereas UCS of food elicited immediate salivation.
After forward pairings of NS and UCS, NS typically did elicit salivation after presented for a few seconds. One trial showed salivation after 9s and 45 drops of saliva.
Conclusion
Link likely to be made in brain between a UCS and an NS that occurs just before the UCS. Pavlov called this signalsation which has survival value in prep an organism for events.
Strength
Reduced EV, enhancing internal validity.
Soundproof chamber means low possibility of external sounds distracting dogs or providing additional stimuli.
Collecting saliva in cannula helps prevent loss of saliva.
NS were carefully chosen and tested to ensure they did not already elicit saliva response.
These controls make it more likely that salivation in response to CS was due to conditioning and not to EV.
Weakness
Conducted on dogs, not generalisable to humans.
Unclear how well findings of animal studies will generalise to humans as we have different brains to other species and may respond differently. Our larger cerebral cortex allows for greater complex cognitive processing.
Pavlov and others believed his findings would generalise to humans, this may not be true.
Competing Weakness
Little Albert study shows that CC does take place in humans. Although we can consciously try to overcome conditioned reflexes, it is difficult.
Application
Clinical applications in helping people understand problem eating behaviours.
Obesity can be partially understood in terms of conditioned responses like those displayed in Pavlov’s dogs.
Jansen et al suggests overweight children acquired very strong associations between cues that predict arrival of food and salivation response, overeating causes exposure to these cues.
Demonstrates significance in developing therapies like systematic desensitisation.
