A person climbing to a high place and looking down may feel dizzy and uncomfortable and then develop a phobia of heights because they have developed an association between high places and physical discomfort. Pavlov’s classical conditioning suggests that not all behaviour is rooted in the sub conscious at Freud suggested, but some is linked to personal experiences which are real and in the conscious mind.
He called this classical conditioning and it has become an explanation of why people behave in certain ways. After a while he found that ringing the bell alone could induce salivation in the absence of food.
Each time he presented the food to the dogs he rang a bell. Pavlov was fascinated by this “learning” so he devised a further experiment. Now, anyone who has had a dog and has a routine for walking them will know that their dog will learn the time of day and wait, sometimes lead in mouth, at the door for their routine walk. As soon as the door opened at the right time, then the dogs would salivate. What he didn’t expect was that within days the dogs wouldnoticed how the hungry dogs quickly learn to associate the sound of their keeper’s footsteps with food and begin to salivate before the food was presented. What Pavlov noticed initially was that when food was given to the dogs their salivation rate would increase as expected. This is because salivation happens automatically, it is a reflex and not under conscious control. You don’t have to think “I need to salivate”. Now you will know if you are hungry and see or smell food you like that you will salivate. It also serves to moisten the food to make chewing and swallowing easy. Firstly it contains molecules called enzymes which are there to break apart certain food stuffs. Saliva has two functions in both dogs and humans.