Learningš ā¢ Pavlov's Study (1927) Flashcards
What was the Aim of the study?
Initially was to learn of the salvation reflex in dogs
Broader aim shifted towards exploring conditioned reflexes:
* Exploring role of conditioned reflexes on eating behaviour of dogs
* Exploring how salvation becomes related to new stimuli unrelated to food
What was the Procedure of the study?
Collecting saliva from salivalry glans of an immobalised dog
* Laboratory experiment; done to reduce chances of extraneous variables distracting dogs
* Dog was strapped to a harness to minimize movement, the salivalry glans was hooked up to a tube with a measuring cylander (in order to empirically measure the response via volume of saliva produced)
ORDER OF EVENTS:
* Pre-Conditioning: presented dog with food through a hatch, lead to dog salivating
* Pre-Conditioning: Presented dog with Neutral Stimulus of a metronome. The dog initially did not salivate at this (showing its a neutrla simulus)
* Conditioning: To condition the dog Pavlov paired the sound with the presentation of the food around 20 times
What was the Unconditoned Stimulus (UCS) in the study?
The food
What was the Unconditoned Response (UCR) in the study?
Salivation
What was the Neutral Stimulus (NS) in the study?
The metronome (sound)
What were the Results of the study?
- NS didnt elicit a salvation response, whereas UCS elicited an immediate salvation response
- After pairing (NS presented with UCS to pair NS with UCR),a salvation response (UCR) was elicited after the metronome (NS) was played
- 1 SPECIFIC TRAIL EXAMPLE: Salvation commensed 9 seconds after the metronome was played, with 45 drops of saliva collected
- Extinction of salvation seen with salivalry volume declining after repeated use of metronome alone as a conditioned stimulus as dog was realising there was no food involved
What was the Conditoned Stimulus (CS) in the study?
The metronome (sound)
What was the Conditoned Response (CR) in the study?
Salivation
What was the Conclusion of the study?
Pavlov had discovered Classical Conditioning
The Neutral Stimulus (NS) (Metronome), after being repeatedly paired alongside an Unconditoned Stimulus (UCS) (Food), turned into a Conditoned Stimulus (CS), therefore producing a Conditioned Response (CR) on its own
What is the Generalisability of the study?
- Anthropomorphism: experiments conducted on dogs who possess lower order cognitive function than humans; therefore the findings of the study are unable to be generalised to humans as they are not representative of human behaviours
+ Humans are not directly motivated by primary reinforcers such as food
What is the Reliability of the study?
- Standardised Procedure: the procedure was standardised with identical treatment for all dogs used e.g. harnessed & held in identical position, screen to block out any visible disctractions, in laboratory to remove all other discractions (minimize extraneous variables)
- Test-retest reliability: the study was repeated many times over 25 years with different dogs and differing Neutral Stimuli
- Inter-rater reliability: got different researchers to observe the dogs and measure the saliva from the tubes
What is the Application of the study?
- Further research into classical conditioning in humans e.g. Watson & Raynor: Little Albert
- Foundation of Behaviourism in psychology, that all behaviour is learned
- Application for changing/ conditioning human behaviour: Aversion therapy; such as:
+VE: Atabuse: a medication that makes it so upon drinking alcohol, it makes the individual feel ill, therefore conditioning them to asociate illness with alcohol, making them less likely to drink
+VE: Ametic Medication: a medication that makes individuals feel sick, used to deter predators from livestock by implanting medication into meat, leaving for predators to eat, they then feel sick, therefore they wont go near sheep again/ try to eat sheep etcā¦
-VE: Tragic Failures: when it was misguidedly used to ātreatā homosexual men
What is the Validity of the study?
- Low Ecological Validity; due to the control to minimize extraneous variables, the environments the dogs were in (Laboratory) failed to be represenatative of real-world conditions, they lacked mundane realisms, making conditions artificial and therefore also the behaviour, impacting validity of results
What are the Ethics of the study?
- Research animals were treated in an entirely unethical manner with conditions that would not be allowed to occur under contemporay ethical guidelines. MITIGATING FACTOR: HOWEVER ā> no ethical guidelines existed in the early 20th century so technically Pavlov didnt break any rules
- Examples of unethical treatment = starving the dogs (to make them more likely to respond to food stimuli & metronome as expecting food), holding the dogs in harnesses for proglonged periods of time & mutilating the jaws and salivalry glands = unecceasry procedures
Complete this diagram explaining the Conditioning Process in the specific case of Pavlovās Dogs
