By far, my favorite topic that we have covered in class has to be Pavlov and his experiment on dogs. In the famous experiments that Pavlov conducted with his dogs, he found that objects or events could trigger a conditioned response. The experiments began with Pavlov demonstrating how the presence of a bowl of dog food (stimulus) would trigger an unconditioned response (salivation). He noticed that the dogs started to associate his lab assistant with food, creating a learned and conditioned response. This was an important scientific discovery. Pavlov then designed an experiment using a bell as a neutral stimulus. As he gave food to the dogs, he rang the bell. Then, after repeating this procedure, he tried ringing the bell without providing food to the dogs. On its own, an increase in salivation occurred. The result of the experiment was a new conditioned response in the dogs.
One day senior year, I was just having a normal day, same old routine. Go to classes, eat lunch, then drive home. Towards the end of the school day, I finally made it to my psychology class, 5 minutes late of course. As soon as I walked in I knew my teacher was up to something. The room was rearranged, 80’s music was playing, and there was a huge tub of lemonade mix sitting on the podium in the front of the room. I wanted to ask what the heck is going on here but he is crazy so I just waited till he started to explain what we were doing so I just went with it. My teacher, Mr. Ludlow, moseyed up to the front of the room and said ” Alright children, we are going to test Pavlov’s famous experiment today.” He decided to conduct his own experiment based off of Pavlov’s before he even told us what Pavlov’s experiment even was, so we were all confused. He went around the room and handed us all one napkin, then proceeded to dump a heaping tablespoons worth of lemonade mix onto our napkin. Still with no idea what was going on, he proceeded to play his 80’s song and told us to dip our tongues into the lemonade mix as the song played, and all of us started to salivate. The entire class proceeded to do this about 10 times, until the very last time he played the song but told us not to dip our tongues into the lemonade mix. We were confused as to why this time we weren’t supposed to, but 5 seconds later Mr. Ludlow said: “Alright wait for it… okay everyone do you notice you’re now salivating without the lemonade mix?” We all were mind boggled and wondered how that was even possible. Ever since I did this experiment senior year of high school with my favorite teacher Mr. Ludlow, I now will always enjoy this topic.
