Paul Brandon told us:
> OK -- I cleaned up the Wikipedia article a bit.
> It did already indicate that Pavlov used a number of different
> conditional stimuli.
Fast action! Much better now. The entry under "Classical
Conditioning" needs similar treatment. The myth will not die.
I also have reservations about the continued endorsement in the
Wikipedia entry of Roger Thomas' claim (in an otherwise fine article)
to have discovered bells in Pavlov's past.
The entry reads:
"Catania[29] cast doubt on whether Pavlov ever actually used a bell
in his famous experiments... until Thomas [31 (AJP, 1997)] found
several references that unambiguously stated Pavlov did, indeed, use
a bell."
Consider Thomas's references:
1) In a 1906 lecture published in _Science_, Pavlov noted the
relative ineffectiveness of a "violent ringing of a bell" as a CS for
salivation.
Thomas himself discounts this reference as there was no indication
that the bell was effective at lower intensities. A bell which does
not work seems a poor impetus for generating the Pavlov bell legend.
Thomas's second reference is to Pudovkin's film _Mechanics of the
Brain_. He did not view the film himself (not so easily done back
then) but rashly depended on _Time Magazine's_ account of it, despite
later in the article pointing out _Time's_ tendency to fabrication as
illustrated by its account of Pavlov's mugging ("Aside from that, Dr.
Pavlov, did you enjoy your visit to New York?") (that's me, BTW, not
_Time_)
As anyone can see for themselve now on the Vimeo link, _Time's_ claim
that the film showed "dogs which dripped saliva at the sound of a
bell" is pure fiction. In fact, a metronome figures prominently in
the proceedings, and a hand bell makes an appearance only to elicit
an orienting reflex. No bell is used to elicit salivation.
Thomas's final reference is to Lamarckian experiments involving
"electric bells", carried out late in Pavlov's career (probably well
after the legend was started) and which Pavlov eventually
repudiated. This in itself would not recommend it as the origin of a
myth, but there are other reasons:
-Anrep, Pavlov's translator, when using the term "electric bell"
routinely described it as "buzzing" and the bell itself was
sometimes referred to as an "electric buzzer". This is not the bell
of legend, which goes "ding-dong" rather than "buzz".
-The experiment concerned mice, not dogs, and running to food, not
salivation
And that's all Thomas had. This is far from the unambigous support
claimed to document the use of the bell to condition salivation
reported by Wikipedia.
More on the film: the Vimeo link provided by Mike P. at
http://vimeo.com/20583313 is not the original Myekhanika Golovnogo
Mozga ("Mechanics of the Brain") but a version edited for an English
audience called "Function of the Brain". I have a videotape (remember
that?) copy of the original _Mechanics_ obtained with considerable
difficulty from the British Film Institute.
Nevertheless the Vimeo version corresponds well to what I remember of
the last time I looked at the original, except that the Vimeo version
seems to be truncated.. There was more human stuff in the original
involving childbirth or breast-feeding, children puzzle-solving, and
footage showing an intellectually-impaired adult. I also have a
video copy of the Vimeo one which turns out to have been kindly sent
to me back in 2004 by someone named Chris Green.
One of the more disturbing aspects of this film, Peta aside, is the
treatment of children depicted in it. One child is clearly shown with
a surgically-implanted artificial fistula for studying salivary
conditioning. The child was probably an orphan and ethics committees
were many years in the future. Wikipedia also took note of this: "It
is less widely known that Pavlov's experiments on the conditional
reflex extended to children, some of whom underwent surgical
procedures, similar to those performed on the dogs, for the
collection of saliva".
Stephen
--------------------------------------------
Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Bishop's University
Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
e-mail:
sblack at
ubishops.ca
---------------------------------------------
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