Classical Conditioning

Most people know Pavlov for the dog experiment! Any office fans? To the field of ABA it is significant because this is where we started.

First, let's talk about who Pavlov was and what he was known for. Pavlov was a russian psychologist who was curious about the human mind. He was most intrigued by the physiology of digestion which led him logically to create a science of conditioned reflexes aka Pavlov's Dogs.

The significance of conditioned reflexes is being able to pair a neutral stimulus to a biologically potent stimulus. All this means is that something is paired with something you like during the presence of something you didn't care for it is then taught to spark a biological reaction.

Now why does this matter in our field of applied behavior analysis? Because we use it all the time!!! The act of pairing a neutral stimulus with something enjoyable, stimulates biological reactions. Here's an example; You are present with a honking of a horn (neutral stimulus) when presented an email of terrible feedback. Now when you hear the horn (without emails present), your heart rate pick up and you start sweating because it is associated with emails related to bad feedback. Of course it's a tiny bit more complicated than that but those are the basics to understanding how classical conditioning works and what led us down the path of ABA.