My First Psychological Experiment

Learning about classical conditioning this past week has forced my to look back on an event that took place the summer before last, during my vacation to Nova Scotia. I was staying at my grandmother’s house with my dad and brother; it was raining outside (as it often does out East) so I decided to watch TV. A familiar commercial appeared advertising a brand of cat treats called “Temptations”. In this commercial the cat owner shakes the Temptations treat bag and the cat would run through any obstacles to get to the treats. Since my grandmother had a cat, though mildly obese, and some Temptations I had to perform an experiment of my own to see if there was even the slightest bit of truth to that commercial. The first few times I shook the bag, the cat (Bobby) did nothing. I tried again the next day, since it was still raining, and got positive results. By the following week my cousins and I used this new knowledge as an attempt to give Bobby some exercise.
Looking back on this experience I now realize that I was merely recreating Pavlov’s experiment, though with a fat cat instead of a dog. The Temptations were the primary stimulus and the bag shaking was the secondary stimulus. The first few attempts, the bag was neutral stimulus since it had not been associated with the food. After the cat realized that the bag shaking was related to the treats, it became a secondary stimulus and thus, conditioning was occurring. By the next week, conditioning had fully occurred, Bobby would run toward the sound of any bag shaking, not just the treat bag.
When we began using the treats as a means of exercise, temporary extinction occurred since we would shake the bag without giving Bobby a treat (giving a treat would be counterproductive to the attempt at exercise). Bobby began to ignore the bag shaking noise, thus extinction had occurred. This was short lived, however, because my grandmother doesn’t quite understand that the treats aren’t healthy!
This was my first psychological experiment, even though I was unaware at the time.


This form of learning is comparable to a flower. Planting a seed is like planting an idea. As time progresses, the plant (idea) grows and will grow even larger with additional water and sunlight (stimulus). If you keep feeding the plant, then it will eventually bloom, which symbolizes the learning curve. However, if you stop feeding the plant it will eventually wither and die.