The Importance Of Associative Learning

As already stated earlier Zeus is a very obedient dog. He knows many tricks such as sit, lie down, roll over and he can even play dead. With the help of a dog’s favorite treat, one can teach them almost anything they’d like. However, it is more than likely that a dog will only learn something if he is getting rewarded for it. This can possibly be seen as a negative ability because if one was truly intelligent and learned with reasoning they could learn without reward or punishment, but many animals and even humans learn by associative learning.
In replication of Pavlov’s experiment an unconditioned stimulus was paired with a neutral stimulus. After conditioning the later one will become the conditioned stimulus. Pavlov showed that a ring of a bell would trigger an association with the sight of food and cause a dog to salivate. Associative learning is the direct effect of the structure of the brain. Scientists reproduced this experiment and the output neuron from a NOMFET synapse activity models the dog’s salvation. At first the devise were programmed so that sight of food triggered salvation and the synapse stays below threshold. When both triggers are used simultaneously the synapse reaches its threshold and the association is made. The graph from this experiment …show more content…
However, it could have something to do with homing just like in pigeons. Dogs just like these birds may have the ability to use navigational cues such as the position of the sun or the magnetic surface of Earth since it is known that many animals are able to do this. The ability to track scent also helps with this as well. Some suggest that PSI trailing, the ability to locate its owners who have moved to a new home, may be another factor as well. However, PSI dives into the physic or spiritual realm which is not something scientists typically look into but it is a possibility (Fox,