How the City of Toronto relates to the kitchen sink
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I wonder if I have discovered a sort of conditioned response beyond what Ivan Petrovich Pavlov found in 1932?
Perhaps you know what Pavlov learned about dogs during some years of experimenting, but just in case you don't, let's take a short review. I had to get the textbook off the shelf to make sure what I'm writing is accurate, so you can trust me here.
Pavlov's first interest was in learning how the digestive system works. He received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1904. In the course of his work he put food in his dogs' mouths and watched how their bodies reacted.
Food in a dog's mouth results pretty much in the same things that happen in any mammal's mouth, including us humans. It makes us drool. We can't see it, but it also makes juices flow in our stomach. Pavlov called this an unlearned response.
Pavlov carved openings in his test animals to see this happening and to make measurements.
In today's labs a scientist would be hauled into court for cruelty to animals if she used Pavlov's methods. We'd be left in ignorance about many conditions and actions if tools were unavailable to observe without drawing blood.
Anyway, Pavlov noticed that dogs drool at the sight of food as well as at the taste and feel of it in the mouth. So do we, even at the sight of a picture of food.
"Hey!" he said, or whatever the Russian equivalent is. This must be a learned response."
Pavlov called putting food in the mouth an unconditioned stimulus, and showing food to the dog a conditioned stimulus.
What would happen if you rang a bell every time you put the food into the mouth?
The bell is a conditioned stimulus. It doesn't take many repetitions of pairing the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus for the dog to drool at the sound of the bell without the food being offered.
This is classical conditioning.
OK. My observation has to do with me going anywhere near the sink in our kitchen. I can't do that without it triggering a hasty trip to the two-piece lavatory around the corner in the hall.
This phenomenon first started with my turning on a faucet to run some water into the sink, or into a teakettle, saucepan, what have you. That I understand. It makes a sound much like what I hear when I lean over the stool and drain my bladder.
Perhaps before water closets were invented, when a doctor handed a patient a bottle and asked for a sample, it wouldn't help to trickle water into something to get things started. You'd have to learn the response to the sound. Well, maybe a china or enamel chamber pot would serve to teach the conditioned response. Teach? Maybe program is a better word here.
My new discovery is I need only be near the sink to achieve the conditioned response. Don't have to see it. The conditioned stimulus is somehow inside my head.
Until the last few years the most powerful diuretic in my experience has been driving through the city of Toronto. With reflexes and attention span weakening with the advanced years, I don't drive the multilane roads unless there's no alterative. Should I be pleased to know not all reflexes are weakening? To prove it I just have to approach the kitchen sink.