The most important thing to remember is that classical conditioning involves automatic or reflexive responses, and not voluntary behavior (that's operant conditioning, and that is a different post).

Pavlov's dog experiments played a critical role in the discovery of one of the most important concepts in psychology: Classical conditioning, sometimes called Pavlovian conditioning.

The students had been learning about classical conditioning, like Pavlov’s dogs, and operant conditioning, when a behavior is rewarded or punished, in their theories of learning class.

Unlike other forms of conditioning, such as operant conditioning—where one, for example, performs an action for a reward—the conditioned response in classical conditioning (e.g., the cravings ...