today we're going to be talking about ivan pavlov maybe that name rings a bell welcome back to verity mind in this video we're going to explore behaviorism and specifically classical conditioning and the research of ivan pavlov this video is part of a series looking at the topic called approaches in psychology each of these approaches explains human behavior from a different perspective the first video in this series was an introduction and included the important work of wilhelm vunt and introspection so do check that out before you dive into this video and the other approaches and just a quick side note for you to be aware of the behaviorist approach comes under the larger heading of learning theories the other approach being social learning theory and at the end of this video there will be some retrieval practice of what we cover in this video so that you can check your understanding let's dive in one prominent behaviour was a man by the name of john watson no not that john watson that would be cool it's another john watson this one a john b watson john b watson is quoted as saying men are built not born give me the baby and i'll make it climb and use its hands in constructing buildings of stone or wood the possibilities of shaping in any direction are almost endless and he also said psychology as the behaviourist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science the position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane these quotes helpfully get us into the thinking of the behaviourist approaches point of view for john b watson he took the view that the shaping of the environment that a person was in was the key factor to understanding behavior according to the behaviourist approach behavior should be observable and measurable moving away from wilhelm von's introspection method animals and humans are comparable we can study animals and learn about human behavior and all behaviours learned from the environment this strong focus on the environment often sees behaviorists refer to humans as tabula rasa latin for blank slates this is the idea that we come into this world as blank slates without any preconceived ideas no inborn ideas what's written on the blank slates our experiences we have in the environment and that is what makes us who we are it's the environment that shapes behavior to quote watson one last time behavioristic psychology has its goal to be able given the stimulus to predict the response for behaviorists the main idea is that behaviors learned from the environment through focusing on stimulus and response behaviorists now break learning down into two parts one classical conditioning in the work of ivan pavlov and secondly operant conditioning and the work of bf skinner we're going to explore classical conditioning in this video and operant conditioning in the next one ivan pavlov was a rather interesting bloke with an even more interesting career he was a russian scientist who won the nobel prize in 1904 for his research into wait for it the digestive system of dogs particularly the amount of saliva they produced what pavlov stumbled across as part of his research was that the dogs started to salivate and drool before any food was presented to them they started salivating at the sound of footsteps as the food was brought to them or the sight of the white lab coat of the person bringing the food to be clear they hadn't seen the food yet only heard the footsteps or saw the white lab coat having witnessed this pavlov decided to investigate how we can learn to associate one thing with another what is referred to as classical conditioning classical conditioning he's learning through association pavlov wanted to see if he could associate dog food with a bell to see if dogs would salivate not when the food was presented but at just the sound of a bell we can explain the process of classical conditioning through the following diagram and key terms according to classical conditioning there is a neutral stimulus in this case the bell it is neutral because in and of itself a belly is neutral it doesn't produce a response other than to perhaps look at it when it rings it's just a bell then there is an unconditioned stimulus the word unconditioned is getting at the idea that is not been learned for example when a dog is presented with food it naturally salivates the dog doesn't have to learn to produce saliva in response to food now what happens is the neutral stimulus of the bell and the unconditioned stimulus food are paired together our behaviorists would say associated together when this happens it leads to the same response as before salivation finally after lots of repeated pairings the unconditioned stimulus food is removed and you're left with the bell which because of the previous pairing is no longer a neutral stimulus but are conditioned stimulus it has become a learned stimulus and you've guessed it what it leads to is a response of salivation in the dogs even though there is no food present so classical conditioning is learning through association when two stimuli are repeatedly paired together they become associated with one another the response that results from one stimulus is now associated with a new stimulus it's also important to note that classical conditioning only applies to involuntary reflex behaviors such as salivation as soon as you pile up dogs and fears now we can develop our understanding of classical conditioning a bit further by what pavlov also noted from his many pieces of research with the dogs firstly there is generalization this is where the condition stimulus the bell could be generalized to other sounds the volume or tone could change and still produce salvation for example in the case of pavlov's dogs and the bell we can imagine that when the dogs hear other sounds like a doorbell ringing the dog might also salivate the sound isn't exactly the same but it's similar enough to produce the same response secondly discrimination this is where the sound becomes too different from the original bell sound that no salivation occurs for example the dogs might be able to make a distinction between the sound of a bell and the sound of a phone ringing thirdly extinction this is the gradual weakening of a conditioned response if the conditioned stimulus continues to be presented but the real unconditioned stimulus never appears the association eventually weakens and becomes extinct for example if the belly is continually presented without food salivation would eventually disappear the behavior has been extinguished now the idea of extinction in relation to classical conditioning is an important concept in the treatment of phobias i've done a video on this if you want to check it out and i'll link it in the description for you below however fourthly there is still the chance of what is called spontaneous recovery if pavlov had stopped presenting the food when the bell rang so the behavior had become extinct there is still the possibility for the response to spontaneously recover the dog may hear the bell and be excited and start to salivating expectation of the food spontaneous recovery does tend to be less strong than the original response given the extinction that's already occurred right let's test yourself now is the time for some retrieval practice let's see what you've learned from this video never be afraid to test yourself it's one of the key paths to learning i'll present one question at a time you can pause the video to answer it yourself first and then press play again to reveal the answer here we go question one classical conditioning is learning by question two in pavlov's conditioning of the dogs what key term in classical conditioning is given to the food question three in pavlov's conditioning of the dogs what key terms in classical conditioning are given to the bell before and after learning question four what is meant by the term extinction in relation to classical conditioning and can you give an example and number five using your knowledge of classical conditioning explain how someone may have learned to feel sick when they see the kfc sign so now that you hopefully understand something of the behaviourist approach bear in mind how much of your behavior and the behavior of those around you may be the result of classical conditioning be on the lookout for associations in your life and perhaps if you have a particular fear in your life you might want to check out this video on treating phobias to see how you can use the same idea of how behaviors are learned through classical conditioning to then unlearn behaviors through the same process and for more on the other approaches in psychology check out the link to the playlist in the description below i hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one