Pavlov’s Dog – Pavlovian Conditioning

Like many great scientific advances, Pavlovian conditioning was discovered by accident.

During the 1890s, a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov was researching salivation of dogs in response to being fed. He inserted a small test tube into the cheek of the dogs to measure their salivation when the dogs were fed.

Pavlov predicted the dogs would salivate in response to the food placed in front of them. But he proved himself wrong. His dogs would begin to salivate whenever they heard the footsteps of the assistant who was bringing them the food.

When Pavlov discovered that any object or event which the dogs learned to associate with food, for example the footsteps or a bell, would trigger the same response, he realized that he had made an important scientific discovery. Accordingly, he devoted the rest of his career to studying this type of learning.