Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov

(Russia 1849-1936)

I.P. Pavlov, the Russian physiologist, began his career as a pre-revolutionary researcher in St Petersburg who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1904, and continued to work under the Soviet regime. An initial research interest in the salivary gland in dogs led to the discovery of what is now known as classical conditioning: an unconditioned stimulus associated with an unconditioned response is presented with a conditioned stimulus to create a conditioned response. Classical conditioning is one of the first theories of learning, developed by observing and manipulating animal behaviour and generalising to humans, and extended through research on habit formation in human behavior by John Watson in the US in the 1920s.

Activities

1. Play: Pavlov's dog
2. Read more: Pavlov