Blog Post #1
Classical Conditioning
Conditioning isn’t just a great way to make your hair shiny and silky. It is also the way you train most animals, including dogs. It was discovered and named Classical Conditioning by Dr. Ivan Pavlov in the early 1900s.
He rang a bell before feeding his dogs. Eventually, the dogs would salivate at just the sound of the bell. They were trained to expect food whenever that bell was rung. In reaction to this they would salivate because that is what they did every single day. Do something the exact same every day for a long enough period of time and that animal, be it canine or human, will expect it without realizing it.
When you get hungry what happens? Your mouth starts producing saliva, your stomach rumbles and/or aches, and your mouth will feel dry. You instinctively want nourishment. It is the same thing with the bell and the dogs. The bell is just the trigger that initiates the salivating to begin.
For example, my family owns two cats. They roam around in my backyard during the day and come in at dusk for the night. The way they are brought inside is by my mother shaking a bag of cat treats on our back deck. They hear the sound of the treats moving around in the plastic bag and come running to her feet. The sound of the bag being shaken is the trigger. That sound lets them know that they will get treats and then go right inside the house. My mother conditioned them to do the same thing every night. They are only given said treats after they are inside and the door is locked. If they do not follow this order then they know they will not get a single treat that night. It happened quite a bit in the beginning. But they have learned since then because they want the treats.
This is just another way to condition someone or something. You train them over a certain period of time to do a certain act and they will be rewarded for it, either by Pavlov giving his dogs dinner or my mother giving her cats treats. It is even possible to condition a human being. They use similar tactics in the military. Though I don’t think quite as nice as getting a treat.
I’ve written about Pavlov and negative reinforcement in selling which is the other side of the conditioning coin. An example of negative reinforcement is an obnoxious sales person who calls you up on the phone, pressuring you into buying something you don’t want to do (aversive stimulus). You eventually agree to buy it (changed behavior), and the sales person leaves you alone (the aversive stimulus is terminated as a result of consequences of your behaviour).
I like your ideas of conditioning which reminds me of another class I am currently in which is about the civil war and slavery. The idea of conditioning can unfortunately be done through negative aspects as well as we saw in slavery the more threatening the master the better the slaves wanted to behave. Some Masters were known among the slaves that their specific master would threaten to sell them off to someone who would treat them much worse, and essentially create that same idea you have state above. The idea being one that has a learning effect weather through positives or negatives conditioning is something that has been very useful to humans through time and history. There’s simple and complex conditioning but I for sure can relate to your idea of having you cats process when to come in. My dogs ring a bell when they have to go outside so I understand quite well what your referring to when it comes to conditioning a being with less complexities than us such as an animal.
I’ve experienced almost the identical situation with my cat at home. His food is down in our basement and every time someone in my family goes down there he expects to get fed. We have a bunch of other stuff in our basement so a lot of times we go down there for something other than feeding our cat. However, he always waits by his food dish and cries for food even if we aren’t even near his food. It always makes me sad to see him begging for food and before I just thought he was trying to trick us into feeding him more. Classical conditioning makes me understand better why he does this. Maybe when I go home now I’ll be nicer when he cries about it!