Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who was born on September 26, 1849 but died on February 27, 1936. Pavlov was famously known for his work and development in classical conditioning which is also known as Pavlov conditioning. 

Pavlov was inspired by two main people, the first being D. I. Pisarev who was the person who gave Pavlov the advice to pursue a scientific career, Pavlov's other influence was a man called I. M. Sechenov who is said to be "The father of psychology". 

Pavlov's interest with conditioned reflex is said to have come about by mistake and this was whilst he was conducting experiments about the digestion in dogs. Within my research I found out that the basic elements within Pavlov's classical conditioning can be seen within classrooms and other learning environments. 

Also, I found out that Pavlov "had learned that when a buzzer or metronome was sounded in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog would initially salivate when the food was presented. The dog would later come to associate the sound with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the presentation of that stimulus". This means that "Pavlov's early experiments used manipulation of events or stimuli preceding behaviour (i.e., a tone) to produce salivation in dogs much like teachers manipulate instruction and learning environments to produce positive behaviours or decrease maladaptive behaviours. Although he did not refer to the tone as an antecedent, Pavlov was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the relationship between environmental stimuli and behavioral responses." 

In my opinion, Pavlov's way of working was quite ingenious because he was easily able to formulate his idea of conditioned reflex due to his ability to break down a complicated situation into a simple experiment in which he could easily find a solution of have a greater understanding of the situation.