Ivan PavlovAdapted By: Manuel Girbal

Background

Born September 1849 Ryazan, Russia

He began his higher education as a student at the

Ryazan Ecclesiastical Seminary, but then dropped

out and enrolled in the University of Saint

Petersburg to study the natural sciences and

become a physiologist. He received his doctorate in

1879.

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849 at

Ryazan, where his father, Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov, was a

village priest. He was educated first at the church school in

Ryazan and then at the theological seminary there.

His life

 In 1870 Ivan Pavlov abandoned the religious career for

which he had been preparing, and instead went into

science. There he had a great impact on the field of

physiology by studying the mechanisms underlying the

digestive system in mammals. Pavlov became passionately

absorbed with physiology, which in fact was to remain of

such fundamental importance to him throughout his life.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

For his outstanding work in the field of physiology he was

nominated to the Nobel Prize in 1904. When he was giving

his speech, he said something that impressed the

audience. Pavlov talked about his “conditional reflexes.”

His life…

In 1850, Pavlov was asked to run the “Department of

Physiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine.” Here

Pavlov would conduct his most important and significant

research, and also he would remain here too (psychology).

Break Through!

“Experiments carried out by Pavlov and his pupils showed

that conditioned reflexes originate in the cerebral cortex,

which acts as the «prime distributor and organizer of all

activity of the organism» and which is responsible for the very

delicate equilibrium of an animal with its environment.”

And so on…

Pavlov nurtured a great school of physiologists, which

produced many distinguished pupils. He left the a scientific

legacy of a brilliant group of pupils, who would continue

developing the ideas of their teacher.

And so on…

In 1881 he married Sara Karchevskaya. They had three

sons; Vladimir, Victor and Vsevolod, one of whom became a

well recognized physicist professor. Pavlov continued his

research and work on conditioned reflexes until his death,

February 27, 1936.

And so on…

At First, Pavlov was investigating what was the purpose of

salivation during digestion. He did this by externalizing

a salivary gland so he could collect, measure, and analyze

the saliva and what response it had to food.

His Original Experiment

Pavlov started to notice that after some time, the dogs

would start to salivate before the food was brought to

them. Pavlov noticing this and deduced that when the dogs

heard the assistant coming with the food they would start

to salivate because they had learned to associate the

assistant coming with their food.

The Outcome of “that original” experiment

After Pavlov realized that completing the real purpose of his

experiment he decided to study the psychic secretion. This

gave him other answers better than what he was originally

set out to look for. He ended up with what we know as

“Pavlov’s Dog.”

What did Pavlov do?

After many attempts on trying to stop the dog from

salivating before the food came, Pavlov tried to isolate the

sound of the assistant coming with food. After many

attempts of isolating the sound with different methods like a

metronome or a bell he discovered another pattern. He

realized that dogs had now associated the bell with the

assistant and the food as well. Noticing this Pavlov decided

to go along the lines of the Psychic process that would be

going on with the dogs.

Pavlov’s Experiment

He decided that this was more interesting than the chemistry

of saliva, and changed the focus of his research, carrying out

a long series of experiments in which he manipulated the

stimuli occurring before the presentation of food.

The Experiment

Apart from finding that saliva was of importance to the

digestive process he also noticed that dogs that had been

familiarized with the pre-feeding exercises in his research

facility, but also began to salivate apparently in association

with pre-feeding routines.

Pavlov’s Dog

In order to validate his point on classical conditioning Pavlov

had to feed his dogs in association to the sound of a bell

ringing. After a certain time dogs had learned to salivate

with the sound of the bell without sight or smell of the food.

Pavlov’s Dog

“If a stimulus that results in an emotional response is

repeated alongside another stimulus which does not cause

an emotional response, eventually the second

stimulus will result in the same emotional response. Classical

Conditioning is thus ‘learning by association’.”

Classical Conditioning

Pavlov states that we are pre-determined to unconditionally to

respond to different types of stimuli. For example, when we

hear a sudden loud noise our unconditioned response is to

flinch. This is what Pavlov means by unconditioned response, in

other words an innate reaction.

Classical Conditioning

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning

The typical procedure for inducing classical conditioning

involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a

stimulus of some significance. The neutral stimulus could

be any event that does not result in an overt behavioral

response from the organism under investigation. The

unconditioned response will have an innate response or the

unconditioned response. This will eventually

Become into a condition

Stimulus and response.

Classical Conditioning mechanism

Classical Conditioning videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpoLxEN54ho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbMxYOdRnPI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning#Pavlov.27s_experiment http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html http://www.ivanpavlov.com/ http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1904/pavlov-bio.html http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05_conditioning/pavlovs_dog.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning#Pavlov.27s_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov#Reflex_system_research http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/classical_conditioning.htm

Bibliography