Is the Pavlovian reflex enough?

Abstract

If a French psychologist had to speak of Pavlov, he would say that Pavlov has shown the ability of a ring paired with food to activate a representation of that food, and thereby activate components of salivation elicited by the food itself He will probably add that classical conditioning is used for phobias in behavior therapy. We win like to show that Pavlov's contribution is not restrictive. Associationism is widespread in experimental psychology. English-speaking psychologists in that field have proposed new models (e.g., Rescorla-Wagner, 1972 ; Miller & Matzel, 1988 ; MacLaren & Mackintosch, 2001) and concepts (e.g., Blocking, Relative validity effect). More important, associationism is applied in a variety ofareas in human research such as categorization, attention, social judgment, emotion, memory, attribution of liking and conswnmer attitudes. The aim of this paper is to clarify those aspects that are unknown in France.