ABSTRACT
According to Ivan Pavlov, the general rule of the conditioned reflex included the motor conditioned reflexes. The problem of the motor conditioned reflexes was experimentally analyzed by two medical students of Warsaw University, Jerzy Konorski and Stefan Miller. After reading Pavlov's just published book on conditioned reflexes, they became enthusiasts of Pavlov's concept of conditioned reflexes. Konorski and Miller concluded that the motor conditioned reflexes differed from the Pavlovian reflexes in that the reinforcement in the former was dependent on the performance (or inhibition) of a specific movement, whereas there is no such condition in the Pavlovian reflexes. In 1948, Konorski published a book entitled Conditioned reflexes and neuron organization, in which he tried to explain the experimental results obtained in Pavlov's laboratory according to the newest findings of neurophysiology, based mostly on Sherrington's studies of the spinal cord. Extensive studies on the problem of motor conditioned behavior were conducted by B. F. Skinner.
