Ivan Pavlov

Sign tracking is the tendency to approach a stimulus that is predictive of food. There have been several studies that have examined this phenomenon in rats as rearing toward a light stimulus predictive of food. The purpose of this study was to provide further research of this phenomenon in Long-Evans rats. Holland (1977) performed one of the earlier studies on Pavlovian conditioned responses. The purpose of his study was to examine how the characteristics of a conditioned stimulus (CS)…

The book that I chose to review was How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through Puppyhood and Beyond, by Cesar Millan and Melissa Jo Peter. It is of import to note that Cesar is, apparently, a renowned dog behaviorist, and he starred on National Geographic’s The Dog Whisperer. Already, there is some credibility attributed to the major author of the book. Going in, I was expecting to come out an expert dog parent. However, this was a different type of training book. This book was extremely personal,…

What were Pavlov’s initial observations that prompted his experiments on respondent conditioning? (pg. 332) Pavlov initially implanted tubes into the dogs’ gland to measure the amount of secretion. When his assistant would present food to the dogs, they would salivate. After some time, they noticed that the dogs would salivate whenever the assistant entered the room, irrespective of whether he had food or not. b. Then describe the exact analogy between those observed events and the events…

The Peer Review Article that I chose is called, “Do dogs get the point? A review of dog- human communication ability” by Juliane Kaminski and Marie Nitzschner which was available online June 6, 2013. This Article approach to dog's communication ability basically uses a lot of research that has already been performed to prove their point that, “dogs forms of communication may be more specialized than was predicted by some and may be best explained as the result of a special adaptation of dogs to…

John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist as well as a radical environmental determinist. He believed that humans could be “conditioned” like training animals. Watson promoted a upcoming change in psychology through a behaviourist approach. Based on Pavlov’s observations ,Watson proposed that the process of classical conditioning could explain all aspects of human psychology. Watson whole heartedly denied the existence of the mind and consciousness. According to Watson different…

Is It True That Blue Dog Food Can Relieve Your Dog's Itching? Is the dog struggling with extreme itching? Have they got breakouts and thinning hair on the skin? If that's the case, your dog might be struggling with a food hypersensitivity. It is really an annoying symptom in which proteins using their food are noticed as 'invaders' by their physiques. Consequently your body attempts to defend itself through its usual systems, a procedure that leads to discomfort for that animal. Fortunately,…

After thirteen weeks of recording the pink-eyed Sprague Dawley rats walking across an elevated horizontal ladder, a circular ladder and a treadmill, I now spend most days carefully examining the videos to evaluate the quality of their walking ability. The video begins, as it always does, at an angle below the ladder. The rat appears in the frame, roaming around, to acclimatize with the environment and probably search for its missing cage mate. Rats are social animals and enjoy being in groups.…

The ability to interpret potential threats and react immediately is an essential evolutionary construct. One of the most important mechanisms for recognizing potential danger is fear generalization: the ability to apply an untrained response to various, similar stimuli. Inventions for overcoming fear generalization are essential to creating treatments for fear and anxiety-associated psychological disorders; however, as Dunsmoor and Murphy illustrate in their article, the Pavlovian-conditioning…

B.F. Skinner accepted the concept of the unconscious to a significant extent. This can be observed when closely examining the role of instinct in his work, Skinners concept of reinforcement and his use and development of the verbal summator machine. When analyzing these three sources of evidence it can clearly be seen that B.F. Skinner must have believed in the unconscious to a somewhat significant degree, despite considering himself a radical behaviorist. The significant role of instinct in…

I imagine that the experience of conditioning Apollo has been much like human parenting: exciting and equally frustrating. After 6 days, Apollo probably thinks he has been successfully training us instead. Since he is a younger rat, it was necessary for Apollo to be well socialized and used to interacting with us. He was not receptive at first, but very quickly after became used to us and his environment. One particular issue in the beginning was his insistence on squeaking when we made contact…