Pavlovs study for classical conditioning

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

To study how the cerebral cortex works in making associations and to look for a mechanism linking reflexes to cerebral cortex

Question 2

Procedure

Answer 2

• Pavlov studied the reflex of salivating to see if a dog could be conditioned to salivate to a completely inrelated stimulus.
• Pavlov used a variety of neutral stimuli including a metronome, bell, buzzer as it does not produce a specific behavioural response in dogs
• He then paired this neutral stimuli with food to condition this new stimulus to produce the same response
• To eliminate the possible influence of extraneous stimuli, they isolated the dog in a small room so that even hearing footsteps outside was not possible, secured in a harness and attached to a device its saliva to a measuring instrument.
• From an adjacent room they could present food.
• Just before placing food in the dogs mouth to produce salivation, a metronome was sounded. After several pairings of the metronome and food the dogs began to salivate to the metronome alone, in anticipation of the food.

Question 3

How this worked

Answer 3

Before conditioning =
Metronome (NS) ————- No response
Food (UCS) ———— Salivation (UCR)

During conditioning =
Metronome (NS) + Food (UCS) ——– Salivation (UCR

After conditioning =

Metronome (CS) ————- Salivation (CR)

Question 4

Results

Answer 4

• In the study, salivation started after 9 seconds and by 45 seconds, 11 drops had been collected
• Pavlov also found that the dog would only salivate when the NS/CS was presented before the UCS, not if it came after. He also found that the dog had to be alert and no other stimuli present to distract or affect the acquired learning

Question 5

Conclusion

Answer 5

That it is “signalisation” in the brain that link the metronome to food and thus gives the reflex response of salivation. Conditioning was also found to be sensitive to many extraneous variables and to individual differences, for example, in one experiment, the same experiment was done on two dogs but produced the opposite effects

Question 6

Low in generalisability

Answer 6

Pavlov only tested on dogs, he used his dogs for a stimulus pairing back in the 1920s. We cannot extrapolate the findings from animal to humans might have a different response to stimulus pairing, so lacks external validity

Question 7

High in reliability

Answer 7

They made sure that the dogs were kept in a small room and the food was presented after the metronome and the bell had been rung. This is good, as other researchers could replicate Pavlovs study if they can gain consistent results

Question 8

This study has real life applications

Answer 8

As this prompted further research which lead to an explanation of phobias, this lead to the development of an appropriate treatment, systematic desensitisation

Question 9

Internal validity is high

Answer 9

As this experiment was highly scientific. This is because its based on empirical evidence carried out a controlled experiment, this is good as it means the results gained about learning behaviour through association are more likely to be accurate

Question 10

Low in validity

Answer 10

Pavlov was at the time, unable to measure brain activity in any direct way and had to assume what was happening in the cerebral cortex from the experiment. He felt that he had shown inbuilt pathways that led from unconditioned stimulus to unconditioned response however, he could not study the exact mechanisms as we can today using fMRI scanning. Lower credibility of the study

Question 11

There were some ethical issues

Answer 11

They operated on dogs to create a hole so that a tube could be inserted to measure and collect the dogs salivia. Also, the dogs had to remain in a small room away from noise. This is bad because it has caused harm to the dogs and they might be in pain as a result. Also by keeping them isolated, they may become lonely and distressed which is highly unethical