Sounds Familiar

I am not sure, but it is possible, that my father had done his own studies of the "Pavlov" reactions. Just not using dogs. It may have been that he decided to do it all using children. His children. In fact, it is more than possible, given there were four boys and four girls, he had a balanced test set to work from. The idea that much of our behaviour was likely a learned response, is without argument. Every child is "trained" by their parents in particular  methodology and behaviour. From simple instruction, to direct conditioning. Our parents generally had their ways of working on the children to evoke the correct reaction. Is that any different to the Pavlov experiments? There was years of accumulated knowledge being applied. Unfortunately, most of it would have been passed down from mother to daughter or father to son and hence, may have been incorrectly applied. Our parents may have recalled some distant incident, they themselves had experienced and having been corrected by their parents for it, thought to themselves, 'I'll remember that if I ever have any children" (lets be honest, most of us thought like that before we had our own) And now, when their child did the same or similar thing, many years later, the actual response from the parent, may have been semi transmogrified (great word that!), and, what they now applied to the child, is only a version, of what their parents had done. Or, it may be they attempted to apply similar responses, but didn't want their child as deeply affected by it as they were, so they dilute the response and in this way it becomes confused, and ineffectual.

Our father appeared never too concerned about the affectedness upon we children. Whether it was emotional affectedness or that physical affectedness. What he appeared more concerned with, were the results. Did it work? I wonder, if he had been in charge of the Pavlov dogs experiments, how would he have got the dogs to pre-salivate? Would it have been the presentation of food, with the presentation of images of food? Or something even more conclusive. Would he (I wonder facetiously), have encouraged something more significant to get the dogs to react than a simple ringing bell. He certainly got we children reacting as if there was the promise of something really significant (like electric shock or submersion in water... Just kidding. No, I am.) just around the corner, if we didn't respond as he may have wished. So there were more than enough pre indicators for the children to pick up on. We watched for his reactions and gauged our next response. If one of the younger ones had not learnt the particular cue or skill, then they were quickly informed, or sometimes, even more quickly abandoned by the older ones, as they left the instruction to be carried out by father.. Or mother. The point was, it could be done without the ringing of a bell, and sometimes (only sometimes), a lot less saliva (from the children at least).

(Continued tomorrow)