Summary The concept of the psyche

82 • Part I. Introduction to general psychology
From the history of psychology
Classic experiment I. P. Pavlov

Studying digestion, Pavlov noticed that with only one type of plate with food, the dog begins to salivate. The fact that any dog ​​has saliva, when food is put in its mouth, did not raise any questions. It was quite natural, but the dog, whom Pavlov watched, learned to associate the type of plate with food. Faced with the case of associative learning, Pavlov decided to find out whether it was possible to teach a dog to associate food with other stimuli, such as light or sound. In his classic experiment, Pavlov implanted a fistula into a dog's salivary gland to measure the amount of saliva secreted. Then a bowl was placed in front of the dog, into which food was automatically fed. The experimenter first turned on the light in the window in front of the dog, and then, after a few seconds, some food was fed into the bowl, and the light was turned off. The dog was hungry, therefore abundant salivation was noted. Excretion of saliva in a hungry dog ​​at the sight of food is an unconditional (innate) reflex. There is no learning here, so food is an absolute stimulus, and the light is generally a neutral stimulus. The dog did not initially react to it. However, this procedure was repeated many times: the light was first lit, then food was supplied.

As a result, it was found that the dog started salivating immediately when the light came on. Moreover, saliva began to stand out even when, after the light was ignited, food did not feed at all. Thus, the neutral stimulus — light — turned into a conditioned stimulus, and a conditioned reflex was formed in the dog.
Over the years, physiologists have developed many variants of the Pavlovian experiment, seeking to comprehensively study the mechanisms of formation and extinction of conditioned reflexes.
will react to the first sound and ignore the second. Therefore, the animal differentiates sounds. On the contrary, if we connect both sounds with one biologically significant effect, then the animal will react equally to any of these sounds. Therefore, the animal is able to make a certain generalization concerning biologically important effects. Thus, at this stage of development in animals, there arises the ability to distinguish and generalize exposure. However, these abilities cannot be interpreted as signs of thinking, since the ability to distinguish and generalize is mainly related to the biological role of exposure.
The next, highest stage in the development of animal behavior is called the stage of intellectual behavior, or intelligence. But you should immediately make a reservation: animal intelligence and human intelligence are not the same thing.
Thanks to the experiments conducted by Pavlov’s employees and his followers, today we have a clear idea of ​​the level of development of animals at this stage and about the features of the development of their intellect. In these experiments, a banana or an orange is suspended in the reach of the monkey (the shim