The conditioned reflexes are elaborated by association with unconditioned reflexes; “their function and extinction are determined by (one or several) coincidences in time of stimulation of the ...

Pawlow calls the salivary reflex “unconditioned” when (as, for instance, on the introduction of food into the mouth) the stimulus naturally and directly calls forth the reflex.

The unconditioned reflex is the simplest nervous reaction. A dog will smell food and turn in its direction. Nature believes in preparedness and the dog will secrete saliva as he goes for the food.

Here is another example of a reflex from an observation made by Charles Darwin (1872) when visiting the London Zoological Gardens. He said that he pressed his face up against the glass cage of a ...

The elucidation of the classical conditioning paradigm has been attributed to Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine for his work on reflexes ...