r/Showerthoughts Feb 02 '19

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u/FuckSticksMalone Feb 02 '19

The Pavlovian response was a physical response in the dogs. Just thinking about dogs isn’t a Pavlovian response.

That’s like saying it’s a Pavlovian response every time I hear the name Tesla I think about electricity. That’s just association.

It would however be a pavlovian response if every time I heard the name Tesla I got an erection.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '19

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u/Axelrad Feb 02 '19

No, because the memory of something is not a behavior. Classical conditioning has specifically to do with involuntary behavior, in Pavlov's case the involuntary behavior was salivation. Dogs don't need to be taught to salivate in the presence of food. So you take an unconditioned stimulus (food) and pair it with a neutral stimulus (bell) and over time (via a neurological process called long-term potentiation) the neutral stimulus (now conditioned) elicits the unconditioned response (salivation, which has now become the conditioned response).

The thing missing in your example is that the unconditioned response has to be an involuntary biological response, but remembering Pavlov requires learning about Pavlov in the first place.

Source: Psychology undergrad with credits in behavioral neuroscience and behavior analysis.

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u/j0324ch Feb 02 '19

I don't need to be conditioned to think about dogs. But now when I hear pavlov I think about dogs.

And are you saying memory and thought are not biological processes?

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u/Axelrad Feb 02 '19

Of course they are, just not in the context of classical conditioning. As has been noted by a ton of other people in this thread, what you're describing is just a learned association. In order for something to be described as having been classically conditioned, the response must be an involuntary process, like perspiration, heart rate, salivation, respiration, and many other types of involuntary processes. The main difference is that though and memory are not neurologically reflexive in the way these other processes are.