Pavlov's Conceptualization of the Dynamic Stereotype in the Theory of Higher Nervous Activity

Abstract

David Joravsky (1989) alleges that Ivan Petrovich Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity fails to explain "most forms of complex behavior" because establishment of second-order and third-order chains of conditional reflexes was not feasible. Yet, Pavlov (1951a), relying on experimental evidence, some of which is presented, held that the interaction of higher organisms with the external environment was based on the dynamic stereotype, that is, on the integration in the cortical hemispheres of neural traces coming from the external and internal environments. In its formulation in the 1930s, Pavlov's theory was dynamic, not associative. It postulated the synthesis of conditioned reflexes, not associative chains of conditioned reflexes.