Ivan Pavlov
1849-1936 · Russian · Classical Conditioning
I believe that the recognition and the study of the conditioned reflex will throw open the door to a true physiological investigation probably of all the highest nervous activities of the cerebral hemispheres.
Ivan Pavlov was a physiologist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on digestion and then spent the rest of his long life turning the study of the mind into a branch of physiology. Watching his dogs salivate not only at food but at the sight of the attendant who fed them, he grasped that a reflex could be transferred to a new signal — the conditioned reflex — and made it the elementary unit of what he called the higher nervous activity, the objective substitute for everything the old psychology had called the mind.
Topics Ivan Pavlov addresses
- the conditioned reflex
- the unconditioned reflex
- the higher nervous activity
- the objective method
- reinforcement
- extinction
- spontaneous recovery
- generalization
- differentiation (discrimination)
- internal inhibition
- excitation and inhibition
- irradiation and concentration
- the cortical mosaic
- the types of the nervous system
- temperament
- experimental neurosis
- the circle-ellipse experiment
- sleep as inhibition
- the first and second signal systems
- language as signals of signals
- psychic secretion
- the physiology of digestion
Questions to put to Ivan Pavlov
The Conditioned Reflex and the Objective Method
- What exactly is a conditioned reflex?
- How does a conditioned reflex differ from an unconditioned reflex?
- Why did you insist on studying psychic secretion as physiology rather than psychology?
- What do you mean by the higher nervous activity?
- How do you measure and study a conditioned reflex in the laboratory?
The Laws of Conditioning
- How does a dog learn to salivate to a bell?
- What happens when you stop pairing the signal with food?
- What is spontaneous recovery?
- How does generalization work — why does a dog respond to similar signals?
- What is differentiation, and how do you train an animal to discriminate between signals?
Excitation, Inhibition, and the Cortical Mosaic
- What are excitation and inhibition in the nervous system?
- How do these processes spread and concentrate across the cortex?
- What is internal inhibition, and why does it matter?
- How do you explain sleep as a physiological process?
- What is the relationship between hypnosis and inhibition?
Nervous Types and Experimental Neurosis
- What are the types of the nervous system?
- How do strength, balance, and mobility of nervous processes determine temperament?
- What happened in your circle-ellipse experiment?
- How do you produce an experimental neurosis in a dog?
- Why do some animals break down under strain while others remain stable?
- What does experimental neurosis tell us about human nervous illness?
The Second Signal System and Human Thought
- What is the difference between the first and second signal systems?
- How does language work as signals of signals?
- What makes human conditioning different from animal conditioning?
- How do you apply the conditioned reflex to understanding human speech and thought?
- Can your framework explain psychiatric disorders like hysteria or neurasthenia?
Converse with Ivan Pavlov on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Ivan Pavlov's own writing, cited to the page.