Illumination notes

Conditioned Reflex and Traffic Lights. When through experience a new stimulus becomes effective to produce automatic response, the neural mechanism producing it is called a conditioned reflex. Pavlov produced conditioned reflexes in dogs by associating for them the ringing of a bell or tapping on the skin with immediately thereafter receiving food. After such conditioning of reflexes, the bell or the tapping would suffice in itself to produce a flow of saliva. In driving an automobile, the shift of the right foot from accelerator pedal to brake pedal, or vice versa, as traffic conditions call for deceleration or acceleration, becomes almost automatic and largely unconscious. The introduction of traffic lights created a new stimulus to that response and thus a conditioned reflex.