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Pavlov’s work influenced the new theory of behaviorism which provided a significant contribution to the development of Psychology as we know it. It became more physiological, which had a significant impact on the development of modern Psychology. Psychology and psychiatry started to be considered from a different perspective.
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Pavlov changed the approach of studying psychology which, after his research, took a more scientific direction. The result of his research is considered to be the foundation of modern science and the entire school of behaviorism (Adams, 2019). His research appears in every book in the field of psychology, sociology, and physiology.
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The analysis of conditional and unconditional reflexes has made Pavlov “one of the most visible figures in psychology’s history” (Adams, 2019, 122). Influence of Results of Pavlov’s Experiment on the Field of Psychology On the other hand, conditional reflexes are those that must be taught, like riding a bike, swallowing when hearing a specific sound or salivating when associating an object or sound with food. These are natural reactions of an organism that don’t need to be learned or trained they happen regardless of what a person is doing. So, unconditional reflexes are those that one is born with, like swallowing, blinking, breathing, hearing, salivating, heartbeat etc. Pavlov called this discovery a conditional reflex, as it required some training (Shultz, 2015). After training, as the result of this experiment, the Dog learned to salivate the moment it heard the bell ringing. During the experiment, Pavlov rang a bell (which played the role of a stimulus, hence could be any other object) right before feeding the Dog it caused an unconditional reflex of salivating. However, he wanted to see if it would be possible to train an animal to salivate on command. As salivation was a natural reaction, Pavlov concluded it as an unconditional reflex hence the dog required no training (Schultz, 2015). After some time, the Dog started salivating even before it had seen the food. The experiment was simple: Pavlov showed a dog a piece of bread before feeding it to him. Pavlov assumed the dogs were associating the sound of footsteps with feeding and thus, salivation would occur as a reaction. The flowing was, in fact, the result of the dog’s response to the sound of their approaching masters. Therefore, when Pavlov was studying “the function of saliva, which the dogs secreted involuntarily whenever the food was placed in front of them”, he noticed that sometimes the saliva flowed prior to the dogs being fed (Schultz, 2015, 203).
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In the process of this research he realized that demonstrated new significant results and, consequently, needed further research. At first, Pavlov was observing and measuring digestive secretions in the digestive glands of dogs. He spent his whole life researching digestive absorption using mostly dogs as objects for study. In 1904, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on digestion (Schultz, 2015). Pavlov Ivan Petrovich was a Russian physician who dedicated his life to physiological research. 322 specialists online Experiments on Dogs and Results of Pavlov’s Research
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