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Why are Pavlov's dogs famous?

Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov's dogs were instrumental in determining the nature of conditioned reflexes (reactions produced by repeated stimuli; also known as trained reflexes). Pavlov (1849–1936) was a medical researcher who investigated the human circulatory and digestive systems. He also conducted experiments with dogs, which were intended to demonstrate conditioned reflexes. One day Pavlov noticed that the dogs in his laboratory salivated when his assistants arrived, whether or not they had food to give the dogs. Pavlov wondered if he could turn normally "unconditioned" reflexes or responses of the central nervous system into trained reflexes. For a time, whenever someone fed the dogs, a bell rang. After a while, when Pavlov rang the bell and had no food for the dogs, they still salivated. The dogs had learned to associate the sound of the ringing bell with feeding time, so they...

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