(ding of bell)
Have you started drooling yet?
Hi, my name is Matt and this is Simply Psyc.
[music]
Today we're going to be talking about Ivan Pavlov,
a name almost as synonymous with psychology as Sigmund Freud.
I'm sorry Siggy.
We're going to be talking about his role in what we call classical conditioning,
or associative learning. Let's get into this.
You see, associative learning is when you pair up two things together.
And we tend to remember those two things paired up together because they have
been paired up together.
Take for instance advertising agencies. Advertising agencies have been doing
this for a very long time.
Especially beer companies. They're very good. Think about, say,
Clydesdales. Clydesdales are beautiful majestic
giant animals. We love Clydesdales. What, anytime you hear about a Clydesdale, what
do you think?
Beer. You see, beer companies have been using things like Clydesdales to sell their
product for many, many years.
(Music)
Other examples of advertising agencies using
associative learning are, for instance, things like jingles along with
commercials
or catchy phrases or celebrities to sell their products, or, I don't know, camels.
Advertising agencies use associative learning because they understand
that people associate things together. And if they associate their product with
something that we like
then maybe we'll like their product.
(music)
Does that taste good Simmons? But what we're talking about here is classical conditioning.
Ivan Pavlov
(Music)
He was a famous Russian psychologist who was doing a lot of experiments with nutrition.
He worked for thirty years trying to understand exactly how we digest food.
Now in Russia there were a lot of stray dogs and so he would use dogs and assess
just how well they were digesting food. He was so successful that he won the
Nobel Prize in 1904.
It was the first Nobel Prize for Russia.
Fantastic for them.
So as he was studying the dog's digestive system,
he was giving them food and when he gave the dogs food they would begin to drool.
What he realized was that even before the dog would take the food into its mouth
it would begin to salivate. The dog would begin to drool even when they heard the
steps
of the owner coming to bring the food to the dog. So then he had an "ah ha" moment. He
what if I could get the dog to salivate on command?
So what he did was he would bring the dog food.
And every time he brought the food to the dog he would ring
a bell. (ding of bell)
Every time the dog got the food it heard the bell.(ding of bell)
So the dog is hearing bells (ding) and eating food and the whole thing. Pretty soon
the dog would begin to associate the food with
the bell. (ding) And this is associative learning.
(Music)
Whoa, slow down there Simmons. Now there are a lot of terms that Pavlov used to
describe what we're talking about.
It's really crazy. In psychology we have all these terms and all these names for doing things
and so this is one of those situations. Pavlov said that the
food acted as a stimulus
for the dogs drool.
Now the food is a stimulus but it's a naturally occurring stimulus. People drool all the
time whenever they think about food.
I know I drool every time I think about cake.
Awww. Cake.
So the food is naturally-occurring and therefore it's a
natural stimulus.
So it's very natural for us to drool when we see cake
or when we think about cake or when we smell cake or
if cake is even brought up in a conversation. Now this natural stimulus
he called an unconditioned stimulus
and the response of the drool is an unconditioned response.
Now we need to understand what conditioning is. Conditioning
is training. (Again in super slow speed) Conditioning is training.
It's like professional athletes training for the Olympics or training to
play for the Super Bowl or whatever. A well-conditioned athlete is going to be
very successful.
They have been trained to do the job. There's no training required
for us to respond to a natural unconditioned
stimulus. So the food is unconditioned and the response
is unconditioned as well. Now when Pavlov rang the bell (ding)
he was associating food and the bell (ding) together. The bell (ding) is what we call a
neutral stimulus.
It's really not paired up with anything. There's no response for it. But if you pair up
the bell (ding) and the food together, of course, because the food is there the dog will drool,
then the bell (ding) becomes a conditioned stimulus.
Eventually Pavlov would remove the food and when he did,
he would only ring the bell (ding) and what do you think the dog did?
Drool. Because the bell (ding) then became a stimulus
for drool through its association with food.
Therefore the bell (ding) is a conditioned stimulus.
It required training. It required conditioning. And the response
of drool is a conditioned response.
And so all of this is what we call classical conditioning.
(music)
Let's take a seat.
Pavlov's work was revolutionary for psychology and it made him a very rich and a very famous man.
That's good for him but it's great for us because now we understand
classical conditioning.
LOOK!! CAKE!!
(muffled) Until next time...
(music)
(Music)