When I was getting my education in the field of education, I had to study a number of psychologists and famous educators. There was John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Abraham Maslow, B. F. Skinner, and Ivan Pavlov to name just a few.

All did groundbreaking work on learning and development in children along with behavior modification. Dewey and Piaget were strong proponents of the “learn by doing” philosophy which led to the Montessori Schools of which Nebraska has 38 with the closest, the Sandhill Cranes Academy, in Kearney.

Maslow had his “Hierarchy of Needs” necessary for children to learn; for example, before a child can learn he/she has to be fed, and they need to feel safe, etc.

Skinner was one of the first to advocate that in order to change behavior you used either the carrot or the stick, i.e. reward or punishment. Many probably remember him because instead of a crib he raised his daughter, Dorothy, in an environmental chamber for the first two years of her life. Some claimed child abuse and the rumor was that the girl went crazy, sued her father, and then took her own life at age 21. Nope.

Dorothy lived a long, happy, and healthy life in England as an author and had this to say, "I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy, and I don't seem to have committed suicide in Billings, Montana. I’ve never been to Billings, Montana!"

However, the psychologist that is relevant to today’s writing is the Russian Ivan Pavlov. He worked in behavior modification. As a side note, most people don’t know that he also won a Nobel Prize for his work on digestion.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Pavlov. He figured out that you could elicit a specific behavior by pairing it with a natural behavior. He noted that when you show a dog some meat, the dog will begin to drool in anticipation of the meal. This was a natural response.

Pavlov would then ring a bell and show the dog the meat at the same time. Soon the dog became “conditioned” and just the ringing of the bell was enough to cause drooling.

I think my cat studied under Pavlov. I’m an old man. Talk to any old man, and you will learn that we have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

What does this have to do with conditioning, Pavlov, and my cat? My cat cries in the middle of the night and it wakes me up. To shut him up I get up and give him a little food. While I’m up, I figure that I might as well go to the bathroom so I don’t have to get up later. Fine, except lately he has started crying again an hour later! The other night he woke me up at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., and 5 a.m. I fed him and without thinking about it, I went to the bathroom at 3 a.m., 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.

It was then I realized that he was conditioning my bladder such that when he cries in the night, I “have” to go to the bathroom, even if it has only been an hour! I think I’m going to rename the cat. His name is O.P., which comes from the Transformer movies and is short for Optimums Prime. However, now that I realize that my cat is involved with the behavior modification of my bladder, I think I’ll start calling him I. P. after Ivan Pavlov because he has successfully conditioned me!