by Saul McLeod published 2007, updated 2013 Like many great scientific advances, Pavlovian conditioning (aka classical conditioning) was discovered accidentally. During the 1890s Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was looking at salivation in dogs in response to being fed, when he noticed that his dogs would begin to salivate whenever he entered the room, even when he was not bringing them food. Pavlovian Conditioning Pavlov (1902) started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. Unconditioned Stimulus (Food) > Unconditioned Response (Salivate) Pavlov showed the existence of the unconditioned response by presenting a dog with a bowl of food and the measuring its salivary secretions (see image below). However, when Pavlov discovered that any object or event which the dogs learnt to associate with food (such as the lab assistant) would trigger the same response, he realized that he had made an important scientific discovery. Summary References Pavlov, I.
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