Pavlov's Dogs
Ivan Pavlov developed the concept known as classical conditioning, the idea that a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired. At first the response is triggered by the second stimulus but after time by the first stimulus alone. Pavlov used dogs to prove his theory. He discovered that by ringing a bell and presenting the dog with food he could train the dog to salivate when it heard a bell whether food was present or not.
Pavlov's theory proved successful when he conditioned the dogs to respond in the desired way. He showed that people and animals can be trained to react to a stimulus in a specific way. We are exposed to classical conditioning everyday. It is used by animal trainers who are teaching animals using designated noises or commands to tell the animal how to behave just like Pavlov did to the dogs or by humans teaching their It is uncertain whether the breed of the dog is relevant to the outcome of the experiment because I believe Pavlov only conducted his experiment on one dog. He should have used dogs of various ages and breeds to further extend his research. This would have provided more data that would have either proved or dismissed his theory of classical conditioning. |
I would have used various dog breeds of all different ages to see if these were factors in the outcome of the experiment. I would have also altered the experiment and used a different stimulus in replace of the bell to test whether the dogs would react in the same way. I think these changes would have extended research on Pavlov's theory.
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