The Helen tree (Voir plus bas pour la version Française: L’arbre d’Hélène) One weekend, while mowing my lawn and working my way around a particular tree, I thought about an argument I had with a woman named Helen. I quickly forgot about the incident and finished my lawn. The following Saturday I was back behind [...]
Tag Archives: learned associations
Pavlov rears his ugly head
I once walked out of a restaurant with two colleagues just as the bell rang at the elementary school across the street. The three of us, all in their forties at the time, slumped our shoulders and said, “Damn! Recess is over.” This little anecdote illustrates a simple psychological reality called classical conditioning. Any stimulus [...]
