Skip to main content

What is the meat to the dog in Pavlov's experiment known as?

The meat to the dog in Pavlov's experiment is known as the unconditioned stimulus.


In Pavlov's famous behavior conditioning experiment, he showed that a neutral stimulus could become associated with a particular response. His experiments demonstrated that a subject could learn to associate an unconditioned stimulus with a conditioned stimulus. The conditioned stimulus would then bring about the same response as the unconditioned stimulus.


In Pavlov's experiment, he rang a bell at the same time as feeding a dog a piece of meat. The dog grew to associate the bell with food, and in time, the sound of the bell alone would elicit a salivary response from the dog. 


In Pavlov's experiment, the various stimuli and behaviors are defined in the following way:


Stimuli




  • The bell is the neutral/ conditioned stimulus. The neutral stimulus is something that elicits no response from the subject (not positive or negative). After association, the conditioned stimulus elicits a response.

  • The meat is the unconditioned stimulus. Unconditioned stimuli are anything in the environment that automatically cause some kind of biological reflex, such as salivation. For example, dogs naturally salivate at the presentation of meat.



Responses
  • When the dog sees food, the unconditioned response is salivation. 

  • When the dog hears the bell after being conditioned to associate the bell with meat, the conditioned response is salivation.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more