Pavlov's Dogs Experiment

Pavlov’s Dogs Experiment

        Pavlov conditioned his dogs much like the dog in this online demonstration. Pavlov was able to stimulate a dog’s salivary glands by ringing a bell, but only after he had established an unconditioned stimulus, food, created an unconditioned response, salivating. He also established that the dog had no reaction to the ringing of a bell, neutral stimulus. When the bell was rung prior to giving the food, the dog began to salivate, thus making the bell the conditioned stimulus. The dog was still responding to the food and salivating initially, but after conditioning the dog, he began to hear the bell, conditioned stimulus, and would salivate, conditioned response, without the addition of food.

        I was able to recreate Pavlov’s exact response in the online game. First, I was able to mimic Pavlov’s experiment by using the bell prior to giving the dog a sausage. The bell initially awoke the dog, but did not produce as the same response as the drums or horn. After three rounds of conditioning, the dog salivated after hearing the bell. This is exactly the response that I was expecting. I attempted the same experiment with the horn and drums, instead of the bell, and produced the same results. Initially the dog was scared of the drums and horn, but after three rounds of conditioning the same effect of salivating to the sounds was produced. Another method that I attempted with Ivan the dog was to use the horn, but only give food every other time. After six times using the horn, the dog had the same initial response to the horn and did not salivate as he was expecting food. I also used the banana paired with the drums, while I used the bell paired with the sausage and alternated between the two. The banana would upset the dog, while the sausage caused him to salivate. After three rounds of each, the dog growled when the drums were played and then salivated when the bell was rung. This conditioned the dog to expect food when the bell was rung and to expect the banana when the drums were beaten. This was the expected response as it is the same kind of conditioning, just with a different outcome. The last method that I attempted was to deliver food with all the sounds and see if the dog would associate hearing a specific sound or just sound in general. The dog was given a piece of meat with each the bell, horn, and drums. Then a piece of sausage with the same instruments. After two rounds of each, the dog became familiar with the particular sound and he salivated. The dog did not react to any sound after only one round of food. This was the expected result as the dog is associating that specific tone or sound with food. The dog was able to differentiate between sounds when given meat or a banana earlier.