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  Psychology Dept.
  University of Idaho

So as we can see in slide four, what Pavlov would basically do is put food in the dog’s mouth and monitor the amount of salivation or digestive juices that occurred as a result of the particular food. For this, and his ingenious designs in stomach surgery to monitor digestion, he won a Nobel Prize. So this guy is absolutely brilliant and has already made major contributions in other areas. But as Pavlov was working on digestion he ran into a problem. Basically when Pavlov or one of his assistants would enter the room, the dog would begin the salivative or slobber all over the place; even before the food was placed into the mouth. So what Pavlov had to do was figure out what was going on before he could return to his work on digestion.

Now Pavlov was extremely smart. He recognized that he had control some very major things to ensure that all outside influences were basically controlled for. So he went to the Russian government of the time and got funds to build a specialized building that was extremely sound proof, had controlled lighting, and on and on and on before he even began this work. At the time, if you recall your history in the late 18 and early 1900s, the Russian economy was not what we consider to be in great economic conditions. However, the Russian government recognized that this could make a major impact, and ultimately, it did.

As discussed on slide five, what Pavlov found was something very simple. If you take some kind of an arbitrary stimulus, that is, one that doesn’t evoke an innate response (such as a bell), and you pair it with a non-arbitrary stimulus, that is, something that causes an automatic response and is something genetically programmed in you, but pairing will evoke a response to the arbitrary stimulus, ala the bell, that the organism had not made before. Pavlov gave these stimuli names which are on slide six. He called the arbitrary stimulus (the bell) the conditioned stimulus and the non-arbitrary stimulus (food) the unconditioned stimulus.

In slide seven, we will walk through an example that Pavlov used. So we start with our unconditioned stimulus (ala the food), and that causes some kind of response (which Pavlov named an unconditioned response). So, food in essence causes salivation, and this is genetically programmed within you. Thus, when you stick a chocolate chip cookie in your mouth, you salivate and slobber. Since I’m thinking about a chocolate chip cookie right now, I’m starting to slobber, too.

He then paired the food with a bell. So he rang the bell, ding-a-ling-a-ling, gave the food (e.g., stick the chocolate chip cookie in your mouth), and the organism would salivate. And over a period of time after multiple pairings, the bell alone would cause the organism to salivate. This is what we call the classical conditioning paradigm.

So, the presentation of the UCS and the UCR,

Pairing the bell with the UCS and UCR,

And finally, the bell alone causing the conditioned response

This is called the classical conditioning paradigm.

So when I talk about the classical conditioning paradigm from now on, this is what I’m talking about.

Now there are also other examples of classical conditioning. We begin showing this on slide eight and nine. In the first example, if I present an air puff in your eye you will blink. I can then pair a tone with the air puff [Beep, puff of air, you blink]. And over a period of time, with multiple pairings, the tone alone will cause you to blink.

A second example is seen on slide 10. This is a little bit more of an applied example, and that’s related to spanking. When you give a kid a spanking, it causes pain. You then pair the parent, [particular parent, parent spanking and pain], and over a period of time, the parent alone becomes associated with the pain.

Here’s another example of classical conditioning shown in slide 11. This is usually in aversive conditioning training with alcoholics and works something like this. If you take emetine it will cause nausea and vomiting. And the nausea and vomiting is just not something minimal, it’s all over the place, projectile vomiting everywhere, the walls you name it, ok. You then take some alcohol and you pair it with the emetine and you get nausea and vomiting. After a couple of pairings (usually two or three), the alcohol alone will begin to cause nausea and vomiting.

So these are some examples of classical conditioning. As you can see, they occur in a wide variety of different types of things. We will talk about that more a little bit later.

Now after Pavlov, who primarily was using gastric juices, there were other people that came along. For example, Bechterev developed a method of motor conditioning where the conditioned response was muscular rather than glandular. This became a lot more popular because you didn’t have to do some kind of surgery to get the organism. So it was an advance over the traditional models that Pavlov had developed.

However, as we can see in Slide 13, Bechterev, like others, began to argue that mentalistic interpretations of these psychological events were not necessary. He begins to argue (as Pavlov will as well), that high level psychological processes (such as thinking, etc.), were basically lower level sensory motor processes. So this discussion goes back to some people that we talked about within the last section, and all of the concepts of associationism. Now Bechterev was going to have less influence than Pavlov, but he’s advocating many principles that are going to be discussed and proposed later by the Behaviorists. As a result of that, his influence, although he’s not as well known as Pavlov and some of the behaviorists, will have a major impact in the field of psychology.

Now some general points to note about classical conditioning before we go much further. The first one is shown in slide 14 and is, that the conditioned stimulus must precede the unconditioned stimulus for it to be effective. When the unconditioned stimulus proceeds the conditioned stimulus, that is called backward conditioning, and backward conditioning does not work very well.

Number two, as we see in slide 15, the conditioned response does not equal the unconditioned response. What Pavlov found was the conditioned response wasn’t always the same as the UCS. For example, when Pavlov gave the conditioned stimulus and got a conditioned response, ala salivation, the content was different. That is, the salivary enzymes, etc., were different than when you just had the unconditioned response. So when you’re pairing the bell with the food (chocolate chip cookies), you get some salivation. But just when you’re doing the tone alone, the salivation just isn’t quite the same, although it looks almost identical.

Number three. As we see in slide 16, classical conditioning is extremely general across organisms. That is, it occurs in dogs and cats, human fetuses, chimpanzees, you name it. It also occurs in neurons. This is how we think that many neurons begin to learn and how they develop new associations.

Classical conditioning, as we can see in slide 17, also occurs in a variety of different environments. It can appear in classrooms, in restaurants, in the woods, in essence, it can appear anywhere.

And finally as we see in slide 18, classical conditioning is a stimulus/stimulus paradigm. That is, what is the relationship between the two stimuli and how do those relationships affect particular types of responses. So in general, as we have reviewed this early material on classical conditioning, we see is that it appears in a wide variety of contexts, it’s general across organisms, and occurs in a wide variety of different environments.

Next time, we will begin to start examining how classical conditioning affects and influences a wide variety of other things. So until we begin to do that, you have yourself a wonderful day and we will see you soon.