What is Pavlov's dog theory?

Pavlov's dog is a classic psychological experiment and is considered the foundation of behaviorist psychology. In this experiment, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov studied the saliva secretion response of dogs and proposed a series of views such as conditioned reflex and unconditioned reflex, which formed Pavlov's classic Conditioning theory.

Specifically, Pavlov's dog experiment was to present food stimuli to dogs to induce their salivation; then the food stimuli were paired with other stimuli (such as bells) and repeated over and over again, eventually forming a conditioned reflex, that is, in Salivation also occurs in response to the sound of a bell. This shows that dogs will develop new conditioned reflexes in response to food, a stimulus that itself can cause salivation, due to its association with other stimuli.

The takeaway from Pavlov's dog experiments is that connections between stimuli can change the behavior of animals or people, and we can control behavior by making connections. This provided theoretical support for behaviorists and laid the foundation for the development of later psychological theories such as classical conditioning theory and stimulus-response model.

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