Many great discoveries have been made through the field of psychology. Studies have been proven to take place back to the earliest centuries starting with philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato. The study of Psychology became more prominent in the late 1700s and the early 1800’s and has become more developed as recent studies have proven theories from decades before them. One very popular study that is being tested by psychologists every day is the theory of classic conditioning.
The theory of classic conditioning was discovered on accident by a Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov in the beginning of the 20th century. While Pavlov was experimenting on the digestive process in dogs, he ...view middle of the document...
Pavlov essentially made into a factory-like atmosphere to help them obtain their goal. He would give them something specific to study, the required equipment including dogs, and the review and revise their written assessments. Around 100 of these coworkers went through this lab and 75% of them successfully received their doctorate degree (Todes, 1997). Pavlov realized that either a “ghost” or psyche actions or a nervous action conducted the digestive system. Measuring the mind was an obstacle to Pavlov’s previous experiment of the black box and that’s when he invented the study that we all know today that brought classic conditioning to life.
There were many other scientists that contributed to the study of classic conditioning. Now we have somewhat a better understanding of classic conditioning and how it works within other animals besides dogs. Bitterman, Menzel, Fietz, & Schafer in 1983 performed many experiments by using a sucrose solution with honeybees and had a similar reaction as Pavlov’s dogs (Bitterman, 2006). The aren’t many post-Pavlovian discoveries on classic conditioning because the concept was very well proven by Pavlov’s studies, but one that was trialed was when a scientist decided to change the environments from controlled to instrumental or uncontained. Scientists hoped that experiments that were being performed in instrumental environments instead of classic settings would find more solutions. Efforts of instrumental training were put to rest by Sheffield in 1965 because he didn’t see the reasoning behind these experiments, but scientists discovered that Pavlovian process was within these experiments and that when the animal would make an instrumental response, it was actually giving itself the classic conditioning experience (Bitterman, 2006).
Classic conditioning is a process that allows organisms to learn or remember things by relating objects with their...