RESPONDENT CONDITIONING

TAKE A hungry horse; expose the duct of the parotid gland on the side
of the jaw; nothing will come out—the gland is at rest. Now, show the
horse some hay, or better, make some movement indicating that his meal
is coming. Immediately a steady flow of saliva will s t a r t . . .
Claude Bernard. La Science Experimentale, 1878

Pavlov and the Conditioned Reflex

In the history of science, it often happens that the facts,
principles, or methods of one field are put to account in the
development of another. This is especially true of a young
science. In psychology, the boundaries of which have only
recently been established, borrowings from other fields have
been numerous. Since 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt set up
the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, our
science has often drawn upon her elder sister, physiology. An
example of this was cited in Chapter 1: the concept of the
reflex actually emerged as a result of purely physiological
interest in the functioning of organisms.
We must now acknowledge another debt, again to physi-
ology, for one of our keystone concepts. This is the principle
of the conditioned reflex, first clearly stated by the Russian
physiologist, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), as the out-
come of investigations begun in Petrograd (now Leningrad)
during the closing years of the last century.
In 1904, Pavlov received the Nobel Prize in medicine for
his studies of the digestive activity of dogs. During these
studies, he noticed something that suggested to him an experi-
mental solution of some of the problems of brain function.
15
l6 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
Drawing about him a number of co-workers, he soon launched
a large-scale program of research—a program that took up
the remaining years of his life and won him grateful recog-
nition from biological scientists throughout the world. Psy-
chologists, however, have profited more from this research
through the light it shed upon behavior than through the
speculations Pavlov advanced concerning brain function.
Pavlov's basic observations were simple. If food or certain
dilute acids are put in the mouth of a hungry dog, a flow of
saliva from the appropriate glands will soon begin. This is
the salivary reflex, long known to exist in various animals,
including man. But this is not all. Pavlov noted, like others
before him, that the animal would also salivate when food
had not yet reached the mouth: food seen or food smelled
would elicit the same response. Also, the dog would salivate
merely upon the appearance of the man who usually brought
his food.
For Pavlov, these observations raised important experi-
mental questions. How did it happen that the mere sight of
the person who fed the dog was enough to evoke a salivary
secretion? Surely, this was not an innate or inborn stimulus-
response relation, typical of all dogs and as uneducable as
the scratch reflex of a spinal animal. On the contrary, it
seemed obvious that the effect of such a pre-food stimulus
could be understood only in terms of the individual experi-
ence of the organism. Somehow, an originally ineffective
stimulus for salivary response must have taken on new signifi-
cance for this animal; it must have come to signalize the
approach of food. Also, it seemed to prepare the animal for
the food by starting the digestive process.
This led Pavlov to develop an experimental method for
studying the acquisition of new stimulus-response connec-
tions. In practice, this method requires no small degree of
laboratory control and technical skill, but it may be outlined
rather simply. First, a normal dog is familiarized with the
experimental situation until he shows no disturbance when
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 1^
placed in a harness and left alone in a room especially de-
signed to cut off unwanted outside stimuli. A small opening
or fistula is made in the dog's cheek near the duct of one of
the salivary glands. WThen the fistula is healed, a glass funnel
is carefully cemented to the outside of the cheek so that it
will draw off the saliva whenever the gland is activated. From
the funnel, the saliva then flows into a glass container or falls,
drop by drop, upon a lightly balanced recording platform.
The magnitude of responses to various stimuli can be meas-
ured by the total volume or the number of drops secreted in
a given unit of time. The experimenter, who sits in an ad-
joining room, can make his measurements, apply what stimuli
he desires (including food), and observe the dog's behavior
through a window.

A
*'*•*£# ffiw

FIG. 2. Representation of a Pavlovian situation for conditioning the

salivary response in a dog. (After Dashiell, 1949.)

When everything is ready, the dog is exposed, on successive

occasions, to a pair of stimuli. One stimulus, say a small por-
tion of powdered food, initially elicits a flow of saliva each
time that it appears and the dog eats. The other, say a tone,
has no such effect, but may cause some other behavior, perhaps
a twitching of the ears or a turning of the head toward the
l8 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
source of sound. The combination of the two stimuli is pre-
sented at irregular intervals over a period of days, always at
a time when the dog is hungry. The purpose, of course, is
to determine whether one stimulus (the tone) will acquire
the power of eliciting the same response as the other (the
food). So, after a certain number of pairings, the originally
ineffective stimulus (tone) is presented alone, to see if it will
produce salivation.
Table I gives data from an experiment by Anrep (1920),
one of Pavlov's pupils; and it shows what happens when such
an experiment is carried out. In this study, a tone of 637.5
Table I
ACQUISITION OF A CONDITIONED SALIVARY REFLEX
(Anrep, 1920)
Number of Paired Response Magnitude Response Latency
Stimulations (Drops of Saliva) (Seconds)
1 o —
10 6 18
20 20 9
30 60 2
40 62 1
5° 59 *
cycles per second was sounded for a five-second stimulation
period; two or three seconds later the dog was given biscuit
powder. At intervals of five to thirty-five minutes, this pairing
was repeated. In sixteen days, fifty such combinations were
presented and six tests were made with tone alone. The test
tone was of thirty seconds' duration, and Anrep measured
response magnitude by the number of drops of saliva that
were secreted in this period. In addition, he recorded the
latencies of the response, in seconds.
From this table you can see that the amount of salivation
in response to tone-alone increased from a zero value, after
a single combination, to sixty drops in the test interval follow-
ing the thirtieth combination. Along with this increase in
response magnitude, there was a decrease in the latency of
the response to tone, from eighteen to two seconds. Little
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 19
change occurred as a result of further pairings of tone with
food, showing that the tone-salivation tie-up was well estab-
lished by the thirtieth combination.
Experiments like this led Pavlov to formulate a new prin-
ciple:
If any casual stimuli happen, once or a few times, to accompany
stimuli which elicit definite inborn reflexes, the former stimuli begin
of themselves to produce the effect of these inborn reflexes.... We
designate the two sorts of reflexes, and the stimuli by which they are
elicited, as unconditioned (inborn) and conditioned (acquired) re-
spectively. (Pavlov, 1923, translated by E. B. Holt in Animal drive and
the learning process, 1931, p. 24).

A schematic picture or paradigm of Pavlovian "condition-

ing" may be helpful at this point.

S (food) ~5rR < sallvatlon >

r (ear-twitching)

In this paradigm, three reflexes are represented. The food-

salivation and the tone-ear-twitching reflexes are "uncondi-
tioned"; the tone-salivation reflex is "conditioned." The
letters S and R refer, of course, to stimulus and response. The
use of r is merely to show that the ear-pricking response to
tone is of no great importance in this conditioning process;
it may even disappear during the repeated application of
the tonal stimulus. The important response, and the one
that is measured, is the one belonging to the salivary reflex.
Early in their studies, Pavlov and his students found that
this sort of conditioning could occur only when the food-
salivation reflex was stronger than the reflex elicited by the
"casual" stimulus. For example, an intense electric shock
(rather than a tone, a light, or a touch) would not become a
conditioned stimulus for salivation because it produced a
violent emotional upset in the animal. This led Pavlov to say
that a conditioned reflex must always be based upon an
unconditioned reflex that was "biologically more important"
2O PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
or "physiologically stronger." The stronger of the two uncon-
ditioned reflexes is the one that strengthens or reinforces
the new stimulus-response relation. The stimulus of the
stronger unconditioned reflex is often called the "reinforc-
ing stimulus."
Pavlov's principle has been restated, by Skinner (1938), in
a way that highlights the importance of the reinforcing stim-
ulus, and points up the fact that a new reflex is formed by
combining elements of the two that were already present in
the organism's repertory.
The approximately simultaneous presentation of two stimuli, one
of which (the "reinforcing" stimulus) belongs to a reflex existing at
the moment at some strength, may produce an increase in the strength
of a third reflex composed of the response of the reinforcing reflex
and the other stimulus. (Skinner, The behavior of organisms, 1938,
p. 18.)
Temporal Factors in Conditioning
In the above statement, as in Pavlov's, a close relation of the
two stimuli in time is specified. One stimulus is to "accom-
pany" or be "approximately simultaneous with" the other.
We are tempted to ask further questions about this relation.
Does conditioning proceed more rapidly with simultaneous
than with successive stimulus presentations? If successive
stimulation is effective, which of the two stimuli should come
first for best results? Is conditioning still possible when con-
siderable time elapses between the two?
Answers to these questions have been sought by several
investigators and we now know that a strict simultaneity of
the two stimuli is unnecessary for the rapid development of a
conditioned reflex; and that a close succession of stimuli, one
being presented two or three seconds after the other, is prob-
ably the most effective arrangement of all. We know, too,
that a conditioned reflex is set up only with very great diffi-
culty, if at all, when the conditioned stimulus follows the
unconditioned, even by a fraction of a second. In terms of
our tone-food example; the tone should precede the food
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 21
(as it did in Anrep's experiment) if the conditioning proce-
dure is to take effect.
As to how far in advance of the unconditioned stimulus
the other one may come, research does not yet give a final
answer. What evidence we have makes it seem likely that a
limit would soon be reached. Two types of Pavlovian proce-
dure bear upon this problem. In one, the salivary response is
first conditioned to a sound or some other stimulus by the
method of "simultaneous" presentation. Then, as the pairing
continues, the unconditioned stimulus is not provided until
the conditioned stimulus has been steadily present for a given
period of time, say three minutes. Eventually, under such
circumstances, a "delayed" conditioned reflex may be estab-
lished: the animal will respond with salivation only after the
conditioned stimulus has been present for two minutes or
more of the three-minute interval. One is led to say that he
can now "tell the time" with considerable accuracy.
The second type of procedure is similar to the first, but
with one important difference: the conditioned stimulus is
not maintained continuously during the interval of delay, but
is presented only at the beginning of the interval. As in the
case of the delayed reflex, however, long-continued pairings
of this sort will bring about a temporal discrimination: the
dog will not salivate until the time for reinforcement ap-
proaches. Pavlov called this a "trace" conditioned reflex,
arguing that the immediate cause of salivation was some trace
of the conditioned stimulus that had been left in the nervous
system of the animal.
Related to these two procedures, because of the time dis-
crimination shown, are the following observations, also made
in Pavlov's laboratory. (1) A dog was fed regularly at thirty-
minute intervals. When this routine had been well estab-
lished, food was withheld at the usual feeding time. Salivation
was nevertheless noted to occur at approximately the end of
the thirty-minute period—the time when the food would
ordinarily have been provided. In Pavlov's terms, a "time
 "SIMULTANEOUS"

T t o e - >• i i i i I 1 1 1 I I i I 1 I i i I i I I I t 1

CS n

US n

DELAYED CR

Jlme—->• I I l i I 1 I 1 1 1 i I 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 1 1 I i

CS

US
n

TRACE CR

Time >. l 1 1 1 1| 1 ! 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i i i i i i i i

n
CS

US n

TIME CR

Time—». 1 f I i I I 1 I 1 I 1 I | 1 i i i t i i i > i

Fie. g. Time relations in respondent conditioning. CS = conditioned

stimulus; US = unconditioned stimulus.
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 3} 3

reflex" was formed. (2) In another case, the same thirty-

minute interval between feedings was used, but the food was
always presented to the accompaniment of a metronome beat.
After repeated pairings of metronome and food, salivation
was conditioned to the sound, as you would expect, but it
was also dependent upon the time-since-feeding. If the metro-
nome was sounded alone early in the period between feedings,
no salivation would occur; if it came slightly later, a small
magnitude of response might be produced; and, as the end
of the period approached, the effect would be correspondingly
greater. Finally, with long training, salivation-to-metronome
was elicitable only at the very end of the between-feeding
interval; the response was conditioned, so to speak, to metro-
nome-plus-thirty-minutes.
These rather astonishing results tell us that the dog can
make an extremely delicate time discrimination, but they do
not bear upon the question of the maximal possible delay
between the conditioned and the unconditioned stimulus.
The experiments on the delayed and the trace conditioned
reflex are more to the point. The fact that a three-minute lapse
between stimuli results in conditioning only after many pair-
ings probably indicates that the limit was almost reached.
Certainly, under the usual conditions of Pavlovian experi-
mentation, in which the pairings of stimuli do not come at
regular intervals, we would not expect to train a dog to
salivate to a tone that preceded food by half a day!

Compound Stimuli
In Pavlovian conditioning, a relation is established between
a response and some stimulus that accompanies the reinforc-
ing stimulus. Why, then, you may ask, does the response link
itself exclusively to the tone, the light, or the touch provided
by the experimenter; are there not other stimuli in the
situation which regularly accompany the presentation of
food? This is a simple enough question, but the answer
is complex, having at least two major aspects. First, these
24 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
"other" stimuli may be present not only when reinforcement
is given, but also under conditions of non-reinforcement, in
which their eliciting power would be expected to dissipate
itself (in accordance with the principle of extinction, to be
treated in Chapter 4). Secondly, a number of experiments
from Pavlov's laboratory have pointed to the fact that when
certain compounds of stimuli, such as light-plus-sound or
sound-plus-touch, are regularly paired with food, it is possible
that only one member of the compound will become a con-
ditioned stimulus. For example, Palladin conditioned saliva-
tion to a combination of touch-plus-temperature. Then he
tested separately the elicitive function of the two components.
The tactual stimulus was found to elicit as strong a response
as the compound, but the thermal stimulus was without the
least effect (Pavlov, 1927).
Such findings have opened up a brand-new field of research
in conditioning, but one into which we need not enter here.
We shall, however, return to the problem in another connec-
tion, when we consider the stimulus control of another type
of conditioned response (Chapter 8).

The Extension of Pavlovian Research

Pavlov and his collaborators studied many other aspects
of salivary conditioning than the ones we have mentioned.
Some of this research is of interest only to the specialist in
this province, and we may ignore it here. We cannot, however,
leave the basic principle without some general remarks about
its extension, its significance, and the influence it has had
upon psychological thought.
We know today that the principle may be demonstrated
in the behavior of many more animals than the dog. Hardly
a species has been studied in which conditioning cannot be
established. Even one-celled organisms seem to display sim-
ilar changeability. Special experimental conditions may be
needed. Thus rats, guinea pigs, and other small animals re-
quire apparatus and techniques that are clearly unsuitable
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 25
for human beings. But the broad generality of the principle
is not to be questioned.
Extension of the procedure has also involved the use of
reflexes other than the salivary response to food (or acid) as
the "biologically stronger," reinforcing reflex. Since 1916, a
number of investigators, mostly American, have shown that
the constriction of the pupil of the human eye, which results
naturally from stimulation with strong light, can be condi-
tioned to the sound of a bell, or some other stimulus. Others
have demonstrated that changes in the electrical resistance of
the skin (through sweat secretion), elicited by such stimuli
as a mild electric shock or a fairly loud buzzer sound, may
readily serve as a basis for new reflexes. Still others have
worked with such reinforcing reflexes as blood-vessel constric-
tion in response to stimulation with cold objects, changes in
pulse beat resulting from electric shock or skin injuries,
and so on.
Many agents have been used as conditioned stimuli, within
the sense-fields of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell—even
proprioceptive stimuli, aroused by movements of the legs,
hands, or arms, have been employed. In several experiments,
responses have been conditioned to words, either spoken by
the experimenter or by the subject. A couple of these experi-
ments may be described briefly because of their intrinsic in-
terest and their relation to the problem of 'controlling' bodily
changes.
Hudgins (1933) seems to have been the first to condition
a response to self-initiated verbal stimuli. He used, as his
basic unconditioned reflex, one with which Cason (1922)
had already worked in human experimentation: the con-
striction of the pupil of the eye in response to bright light.
In a rather complicated sequence of stimulus pairings and
combinings, he was able to condition this pupillary reflex
to (1) the sound of a bell; (2) a vigorous contraction of the
hand and fingers; (3) the word contract, as spoken by the
experimenter; (4) contract, when spoken by the subject him-
26 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
self; (5) contract, when whispered by the subject; and, finally,
(6) the subject's silent, or sub-vocal, contract. Which is to say
that, through a conditioning procedure, the subject came to
control his own pupillary contraction—a feat that is ordinarily
thought impossible for human beings.

8 16 24 32 40 46
NUMBER OF REINFORCEMENT REPETITIONS
FIG. 4. An acquisition curve showing the magnitude of the condi-
tioned galvanic skin response after varying numbers of reinforcements.
The CS was a tone; the US for this respondent was an electric shock
to the wrist. (After Hull, 1943, based on data of Hovland, i937d.)

Menzies (1937) conditioned changes in the skin tempera-

ture of human subjects by a very ingenious technique. Un-
conditioned stimulation was applied by immersing a sub-
ject's hand in a beaker of ice-water, and the measured re-
sponse was the elicited change in temperature of the sub-
ject's other hand. (It had been known, since 1858, that a fall
in the temperature of one hand is regularly accompanied by
a similar change in the temperature of the other.) With this
stimulation was paired, in various parts of Menzies' experi-
ment: (a) the sound of an electric bell or a buzzer; (b) a
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING %>]
visual pattern of illuminated crosses; (c) verbal stimuli—the
meaningless word prochaska, spoken aloud by the experi-
menter and repeated in a whisper by the subject, or merely
whispered by the subject alone; and (d) the proprioceptive
stimulation provided by extension of the arm, clenching of
a fist, or holding the head in a thrown-back position. Condi-
tioning was effectively established, in from nine to thirty-six
pairings, for twelve of the fourteen subjects. (In one of the
two 'failures,' conditioning was doubtful; in the other it
did not take place, presumably because the unconditioned
stimulus itself was not always effective.) It was set up to verbal
stimuli as readily when the subject whispered the word to
himself as when the whispering was combined with the ex-
perimenter's spoken word. Moreover, in three subjects who
had been conditioned to respond to the visual pattern, the
temperature change could be induced by asking them to
"recall" or "think about" the stimulus! In short, Menzies
showed convincingly that a conditioned thermal change could
be set up easily in his subjects with all of the stimuli that
he tried, both exteroceptive and proprioceptive.
Such experiments as these raise some important questions
concerning the nature of "voluntary control," but this is not
the place for their consideration. At this point, it is probably
enough to say that the problem will not be solved on the
basis of Pavlovian conditioning alone, since this type of con-
ditioning fails to tell us how the controlling word (contract
or any other) itself comes to be strengthened.
Physiologists tell us that all the reflexes thus far mentioned
are alike in one important respect: they depend upon auto-
nomic nervous system function. They involve the action of
glands and smooth muscles (e.g., the secretion of sweat and
the contraction of blood-vessels). Since the action of such
effectors is often associated with states of emotion (in "fear,"
the saliva dries up, the sweat pours out, the skin cools, the
pupils of the eyes dilate, etc.), it will come as no surprise for
28 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
you to learn, in later chapters, that these states may be con-
ditioned in Pavlovian fashion.
Yet, a few reflexes do not require autonomic function and
may apparently be reinforcing. Foot-withdrawal at the onset
of electric shock is neither a smooth-muscle nor a glandular
response, but it has been used as a basic unconditioned reflex
by Russian and American workers in many experiments.
Bechterev (1857-1927), one of Pavlov's contemporaries, was
the first to work extensively with this response and, in this
country, through the studies of Liddell and others, it has
become a common form of conditioning procedure.
The experiments of Liddell and his collaborators, using
sheep as subjects, are of particular interest in showing the
relative complexity of the behavior involved in such "motor"
conditioning situations. A common technique in their studies
is one in which the sound of a metronome is paired with an
electric shock to the animal's left foreleg. At first, only the
shock will elicit a flexion of the leg muscles, but, after a few
stimulus combinations, the beating of the metronome is in
itself sufficient to evoke the response. (Along with this effect
there may also be measured a conditioned change in skin
resistance and breathing rate.) This is, to all appearances, a
simple and straightforward case of Pavlovian conditioning.
It may be shown, however, that seemingly minor alterations
in the experimental procedure are enough to produce dra-
matic changes in the subject's behavior. In one experiment,
when shock regularly followed a five-second series of metro-
nome beats, an increase in the daily number of stimulus pair-
ings from ten to twenty resulted in an entirely unpredicted
change in the sheep's behavior. Formerly a steady and tract-
able animal, he suddenly began to show distinctly "neurotic"
symptoms. He resisted being led into the laboratory; once
in the experimental harness, he became quiet, but only for as
long as the experimenter remained in the room; when left
alone, and before any stimuli had been applied, he began to
make foreleg movements as if in expectation of the shock;
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 29
the effect of the shock, when actually given, was to quiet the
animal for a minute or more but, as the time for the next
stimulation approached, the frequency of the leg movements
increased. In spite of a reinstatement of the earlier experi-
mental conditions, this deviation from normal behavior be-
came daily more pronounced, and was alleviated only by a
long vacation in pasture (Anderson and Liddell, 1935).
Observations of this sort, on other animals and over a
period of years, have raised important questions concerning
the origin, development, and cure of neurotic behavior-
questions already raised by Pavlov in his studies of the dis-
criminative capacities of dogs (see Chapter 5), and questions
to which Liddell himself has given much attention (Liddell,
1938). They also suggest the presence, in an apparently "pure"
Pavlovian set-up, of factors which have not as yet been fully
identified. Certainly the results of such experiments as Lid-
dell's are strikingly at odds with those obtained in the con-
ditioning of salivary and other autonomic functions.
The latter suggestion is supported by several recent dem-
onstrations of pseudo-conditioning, in which motor responses
not unlike foot-withdrawal have been employed, and in which
"conditioning" occurred without any pairing of stimuli. For
example, Reinwald (1938) has observed that white rats, after
jumping and running in response to a few electric shocks,
will react similarly to a tone that was initially without ob-
servable effect upon their behavior. Had this effect resulted
from a succession of tone-shock combinations, it could easily
have been mistaken for true conditioning. Certain strong un-
conditioned stimuli may, apparently, be so generally disturb-
ing as to render an organism sensitive to influences which,
under other circumstances, would not have been felt.
Indirect evidence of the complexity of supposedly simple
extensions of Pavlov's technique to responses that involve
action of the somatic, rather than autonomic, nervous system
will be presented in the following chapter. You will see that
it is possible, in some such instances, to point to the operation
30 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
of another basic principle of conditioning—one that clearly
applies to most of our everyday actions and is often found in
combination with the one now under discussion. You will also
be able to understand why one theorist (Skinner, 1938) has
suggested that Pavlovian conditioning is limited exclusively
to autonomic responses.

Respondent Behavior
Whatever the strengths or limitations of the Pavlovian prin-
ciple, one point stands out clearly: this type of conditioning
always depends upon the elicitation of response. Food elicits
salivation; strong light elicits a pupillary constriction; shock
elicits foot-withdrawal; and so on. The unconditioned stim-
ulus is observable, and the basic reflex occurs with a regularity
and automaticity comparable to the reaction of a spinal dog.
Also, as with a spinal reflex, strength may be measured in
terms of such properties as latency and response magnitude.
The name respondent has been given to stimulus-elicited
behavior in order to contrast it with behavior for which no
stimuli can be identified. We have adopted this term and
will use it in the succeeding pages of this book. By introducing
it here, we justify the title of the present chapter and pave
the way for later discussion. Since all the reflexes thus far
mentioned involve the action of identifiable eliciting stimuli,
we may use respondent as the equivalent of Pavlovian condi-
tioning, and we may speak of a respondent when referring
to a specific instance of such conditioned or unconditioned
behavior.

Higher-Order Conditioning
It was reported from Pavlov's laboratory, early in the
twenties of this century, that a conditioned reflex, once set
up, might serve as the unconditioned-reflex basis of another;
and a distinction was made between primary and secondary,
or higher-order, conditioning. Frolov, one of Pavlov's co-
workers, conditioned salivation to both the sound of a buzzer
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING $1
and the beat of a metronome. When these two first-order
conditionings were well established, he used them in build-
ing a second-order reflex—salivation in response to a visual
stimulus, a black square. Great caution had to be exercised
in presenting the stimuli: an interval of fifteen seconds had
to elapse between the black square and the sound of the
'reinforcing' metronome beat or no conditioning was possible.
Also, the secondary reflex never became very strong: the
latency was great and the response magnitude was small. But
some effect was discernible, in spite of the fact that the black
square was never paired directly with the original food
stimulus.
In another experiment, Foursikov used the foot-withdrawal
response to electric shock as his basic reflex and was able to
obtain results that pointed to the possibility of third-order
conditioning. The withdrawal response was first conditioned
to a tactual stimulus, then to the sound of bubbling water,
and, finally, to a tone of 760 cycles per second, with each new
reflex based exclusively upon the preceding one. This is
schematized in the three paradigms shown on this page,
where Roman numerals I, II, and III indicate the succes-
sively conditioned reflexes. Again, however, the effect re-
quired highly controlled experimental conditions, was rather
unstable, and grew less as the order went higher. Also, pro-
longed attempts by Foursikov to set up a fourth-order reflex
were entirely without success.
S (shock) *- R (foot^withdrawal)

8 (touch) -

6 (touch) »- R (foot-withdrawaf)
II

S (bubbling water) -

S (bubbling water) >• R (foot-withdrawal)

in -~
^ ^
S(tooe)
$2 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
It is possible that the facts do not clearly prove the existence
of higher-order conditioning. Conceivably, the findings are
due to other factors in the situation than stimulus combina-
tion. In Foursikov's study, one might point to the sensitizing
effect of electric shock and the similarity of the sound of tone
to that of bubbling water for at least some of the effects of
the conditioning procedure. Be this as it may, the influence
of higher-order conditioning could hardly be expected to play
much of a part in the everyday behavior of organisms, where
conditions are seldom well controlled.

Pavlov's Place in Psychology

The principle of respondent conditioning, firmly estab-
lished on an experimental footing, had many repercussions
in psychology. It appealed especially to the objectivists in the
field as a welcome replacement for the older, subjective "asso-
ciation of ideas"—a legacy from British philosophy. Men like
John B. Watson saw in the concept at least a partial explana-
tion of the fact that many stimulus-response relations, not
discoverable in infancy, are present in adult life. Ignoring the
problem which this raised for anyone who sought to identify,
in any adult, all the stimuli for his responses, they seized upon
the principle to show that everyone's behavior repertory is
the final product of countless stimulus substitutions. Over-
whelmed by the vision of a natural-science explanation of
behavior that had previously been attributed to 'psychic' or
'mental* influence, they forgot for a time that they were at
the beginning, rather than the end of their labors.
The apparent demonstration of higher-order conditioning
gave added impetus to this movement. Overlooking the diffi-
culties involved in such a demonstration, they accepted the
experimental findings with alacrity as evidence of the all-
embracing power of Pavlov's formulation. If the mere com-
bination of stimuli, even if remote from the one that was
initially reinforcing, sufficed to set up new stimulus-response
connections, the very citadel of subjectivity—the "higher
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 33
mental processes" of imagination and thought—might soon be
stormed.
Pavlov himself, although not unaware of the behavioral
implications of his work, was more interested in the light he
thought it shed upon the functions of the brain. Condition-
ing, for him, depended upon the rigorous control of experi-
mental variables—time of stimulus presentation, number of
reinforcements, strength of the basic reflex, and other factors
—all of which were to be studied in detail by laboratory
methods. Wherever he looked, he saw problems, the analysis
of which required research, and more research. On the other
hand, his most ardent psychological admirers saw only solu-
tions, answers to age-old questions. When these early enthusi-
asts recognized any scientific problem, it was merely the old
one of identifying the stimulus components of every environ-
mental situation and describing the responses associated there-
with. And such a problem does not readily give way to
experimental attack.
Nowadays we view the matter in a different way. Modern
psychologists, although less interested in the physiological
implications of their studies in this field, tend to lean in
Pavlov's direction. That is, they have wholeheartedly adopted
his experimental attitude and in general are wary of extend-
ing the principle into territory not already cleared by labora-
tory research. Gradually, they have taught us to see the limita-
tions as well as the strength of Pavlov's work.
Respondent conditioning is now a well-accepted principle
of behavior. Pavlov would deserve a place in the history of
psychology, if for no other reason. Fortunately for us, his
work did not stop at this point. When we consider, in the
chapters to come, such concepts as those of "extinction,"
"generalization," and "discrimination," we shall again have
occasion to pay homage to this Russian genius. He did not
give us a complete system of behavior. In fact, we shall see
that other, non-Pavlovian, principles have actually become
more important in the development of such a system. But he
34 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
carried us a great step forward in the path we were destined
to follow in the scientific study of animal and human conduct.
In retrospect, it is interesting to consider that a physiologist
should have been the man to do so much in promoting our
enterprise. We are in no position to weigh his contributions
within his chosen field; we can say very little about the degree
to which he cleared up the mystery of brain action; but his
work will stand for many generations as a landmark in the
analysis of behavior.

NOTES
The best single source-book for English-speaking students of re-
spondent conditioning is Pavlov's Conditioned reflexes: an investiga-
tion of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex, a translation
from the Russian by G. V. Anrep, published in London by the Oxford
University Press in 1927. Another book, a collection of Pavlov's Lec-
tures on Conditioned Reflexes, translated by W. H. Gantt, was pub-
lished in New York by International Publishers in 1928. Besides the
lectures themselves, this volume includes a short biography of Pavlov
(by Gantt) and a bibliography of nearly two hundred different articles
which emanated from Pavlov's laboratory between 1903 and 1926.
Before 1927, however, psychologists in this country had a very incom-
plete picture of Pavlov's work, and his influence was felt only gradually.
It has been pointed out recently, by Hilgard and Marquis (1940),
that the work of Vladimir M. Bechterev actually aroused more in-
terest in this country than did that of Pavlov himself. Bechterev, as
mentioned in your chapter, dealt with responses like foot-withdrawal
to electric shock. Since his publications were often in German, and
occasionally in French, they were more accessible to American readers.
Having been a student at Leipzig under Wundt, he retained a strong
interest in psychology and an acquaintance with its problems; and
he used human as well as animal subjects in his experiments. His most
important book, Objective psychology, was translated into French and
German in 1913, and his teachings are now available in English
(General principles of human reflexology, 1932). Since 1927, however,
with the appearance in English of Pavlov's monumental work. Bech-
terev's influence has gradually disappeared. Modifications of his basic
technique are still used in many laboratories in the United States
(at Yale, Cornell, Rochester, and Indiana, to mention but a few), but
researchers have quite generally adopted the terminology and syste-
matic concepts of Pavlov.
Among the names associated with the early development of interest
in Pavlov (and Bechterev) in this country are those of R. M. Yerkes
 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING 35
and S. Morgulis (1909), J. B. Watson (1916), K. S. Lashley (1916),
W. H. Burnham (1917), F. Mateer (1918), S. Smith and E. R. Guthrie
(1921), H. Cason (1922), and F. H. Allport (1924). You will find an
excellent review of this development, together with a summary of some
important Pavlovian concepts, in the first two chapters of Conditioning
and learning (Hilgard and Marquis, 1940).
A good review of early studies in stimulus compounding (in Russia
and elsewhere) is available in a paper by G. H. S. Razran (1939c). This
is one of many reviews by Razran, whose scholarly interests and ac-
quaintance with the Russian language have permitted him to render
invaluable service to his American colleagues. Except for the trans-
lations of Pavlov's books, our principal contact with Russian research
has been made through Razran's efforts.