Who was Ivan Pavlov?
Hi there, everyone!!!!!!
Well, today we are going to talk about Ivan Pavlov and his contribution to behaviorism theory. I hope you enjoy the reading!
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov developed the concept of the conditioned reflex through a study with dogs. He was born on September 14th, 1849, in Russia. Pavlov was son of a village priest, and in his youth, he attended at a church school and theological seminar. However, inspired by I. M. Sechenov ideas, Pavlov abandoned his religious career to devote his life to psychology and science.
Firstly, he studied physiology at the University of St. Petersburg, and during this period of time, Pavlov started to conduct experiments about the activity digestion in dogs. Pavlov became interested in studying reflexes when he saw that dogs salivated even without the proper stimulus.
The experiment consisted in showing to a hungry dog food and measuring its salivary secretions, that would be analysed. The goal was study how digestive system worked during the production of salive. But Pavlov noticed that something interesting happened in the experiment. As the aim was to stimuled the dog's production of salive, there was a person wearing a white coat who used to ring a bell in order to call the dog's attention to the food, but as the time went by, Pavlov observed that just the bell's sound became a sort of trigger to dog started to salivate, as well as the sight of person wearing the white coat and the equipament used during the experiment.
Then Pavlov realized that the dog associated the sound produced by bell, any object or event which the dogs learnt to associate with food would trigger the same response, because, even when there was no food, the dog would associate it with the ideia that it will be fed and then started to salivate.
This experiment was a turning point in Pavlos's life. It gave a new direction in his studies since he dedicated the rest of his career to studying this type of learning. It also lead the way for Behaviorism becomes a theory based on the argument that the dog did not do it before the experiment, so this must have been learned, because there came a point where they started their behavior had changed. He published its results in 1903, The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals, and won in 1904 a Nobel Prize for his work.
REFERENCES:
Biography.com Editors. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Biography. <http://www.biography.com/people/ivan-petrovich-pavlov-9435332#awards-and-achievements
SCIENTISTS Famous. Ivan Pavlov. <http://www.famousscientists.org/ivan-pavlov/>
IMAGE SOURCE:
Image 1 <http://psicologaerika.webnode.com/news/a-visao-de-uma-comida-apetitosa-faz-um-homem-faminto-salivar/>
Image 2 <https://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html>
