Pavlov's Study

Question 1

What did Pavlov find to happen when a dog encountered a stimulus of food?

Answer 1

salivation

Question 2

Why did Pavlov use a soundproof lab?

Answer 2

He created a soundproof lab to see if precise stimuli would evoke a response in conditions that ensured no direct contact between the dogs and experimenter.

Question 3

What happened in Pavlov’s study?

Answer 3

The dog was shown a NS (metronome) immediately before the food arrived.

Question 4

What did Pavlov find to happen when the dog was presented the NS?

Answer 4

The dogs learned to associate the metronome (NS) with food.

After a while, just the sound of the metronome would cause salivation.

Question 5

What did Pavlov conclude?

Answer 5

That environmental stimuli that had no previous relation to a reflex action could, through repeated pairing, trigger a salivation reflex.
Through the process of associative learning (conditioning) the conditioned stimulus leads to a conditioned response.

Question 6

How did Pavlov find that dogs showed stimulus generalisation?

Answer 6

The more similarity there was between a new NS and the CS, the greater the amount of salivation from the dog.

Question 7

What other NS did Pavlov use to test for reliability?

Answer 7

A vanilla odour
A visual test involving a rotating disk

Question 8

Give 2 strengths of Pavlov’s study

Answer 8

Pavlov used carefully controlled environments - objective and scientific

Repeated classical conditioning experiments on dogs - reliable

Question 9

Give 2 weaknesses of Pavlov’s study

Answer 9

Used animals (Dogs) and so can’t be generalised to humans - generalisability

Pavlov was unable to measure brain activity in any direct way and so had to assume.