Pavlov’s Dogs and Why They are Significant. During the 1890s up to 1920s a Russian scientist named Ivan Pavlov conducted a series of experiments to find out what caused the saliva of animals to flow. He decided to conduct his experiments on dogs. During these experiments, he re-routed the dog’s saliva glands to the outside of the dog’s cheek, and put a flask under it to collect the saliva. However, after a short while, he noticed that the dogs weren’t salivating when presented with food, but instead whenever they saw a lab coat! Pavlov realised that the animals who have been through the procedure more than once before made links between the people in white lab coats and food. He decided to experiment on this further. He set up a station with wooden screens, where the dogs couldn’t see them, and presented them with food. The dogs salivated, so he proceeded to the next part of the experiment. He once again gave the dog the same food, but now before he put a plate in front of the dog, he rang a bell. After feeding the dog several times after the bell rang, the dogs started to salivate at the sound of the bell alone! Although the experiment was originally conducted to look deeper into the digestion …show more content…
His father was the village priest and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. However, using the resources and books at his disposal, Ivan decided to become a man of science, rather than that of faith. Some say that it was the influence of one of the Darwin’s books that made him so intrigued with science. The amazing thing is, Pavlov himself despised psychology and instead wanted to explore the body functions of different life forms. In 1870 he started to study natural studies in the University of Saint Petersburg. After his experiment with the salivating dogs however, he decided to leave the natural studies and studied psychology instead. He died in the 27th of February 1936 in