Classical, operant, and observational are all types of conditioning and learning. Conditioning, in psychology, is causing an organism to exhibit a specific response to a stimulus. A stimulus is anything that classical conditioning is a form of learning, in which a reflexive or automatic response transfers from one stimulus to another. For instance, a person who has had painful experiences at the dentists office may become fearful at just the sight of the dentists office building. Fear, a natural response to a painful stimulus, has transferred to a different stimulus, the sight of a building. Most psychologists believe that classical conditioning occurs when a person forms a mental association between two stimuli, so that encountering one stimulus makes the person think of the other. People tend to form these mental associations between events or stimuli that occur closely together in space or time.
Classical conditioning was discovered by accident by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov was studying how saliva aids the digestive process. He would give a dog some food and measure the amount of saliva the dog produced while it ate the meal. After the dog had gone through this procedure a few times, however, it would begin to salivate before receiving any food. Pavlov believed that someme new stimulus, had become associated with the food and produced the response of salivation in the dog. After an animal has learned a conditioned response to one stimulus, it may also respond to similar stimuli without training. If a child is bitten by a large black dog, the child may fear not only that dog, but other large dogs.
The Essay on How To Trainn A Dog
What I want to do is train my dog to shake with either paw upon request. If I say right I want him to raise his right paw and the same for the left. I would use operant and classical conditioning to reach the goal of teaching this trick to my dog. I must condition the dog to shake by using positive reinforcement. The dog (Max) already puts his paw on me when I grab his head so I will act like I am ...
This is called generalization. Less similar stimuli will usually produce less After studying classical conditioning in dogs and other animals, psychologists became interested in how this type of learning might apply to human behavior. American psychologist John B. Watson conditioned a baby named Albert to fear a small white rat by pairing the sight of the rat with a loud noise. Although their experiment was ethically questionable, it showed for the first time that humans can learn to fear seemingly unimportant stimuli when the stimuli are associated with unpleasant experiences. Psychologists now know that classical conditioning explains many emotional responsessuch as happiness, excitement, anger, and anxietythat people have to specific stimuli. One of the most widespread and important types of learning is operant conditioning, which involves increasing a behavior by following it with a reward, or decreasing a behavior by following it with punishment. operant conditioning refers to the fact that the learner must operate, or perform a certain behavior, before receiving a reward or punishment.
For example, if a mother starts giving a boy his favorite snack every day that he cleans up his room, before long the boy may spend some time each day cleaning his room in anticipation of the snack. In this example, the boys behavior increases because it is followed by a reward or reinforcer. Positive reinforcement, is a method of strengthening behavior by following it with a pleasant stimulus. Positive reinforcement is a powerful method for controlling the behavior of both animals and people. Negative reinforcement is a method of strengthening a behavior by following it with the removal of an unpleasant Some of the earliest scientific research on operant conditioning was conducted by American psychologist Edward L. Thorndike.
Thorndikes research subjects included cats, dogs, and chickens. To see how animals learn new behaviors, Thorndike used a small chamber that he called a puzzle box. He would place an animal in the puzzle box, and if it performed the correct behavior the door would swing open and the animal would be rewarded with some food located just outside the cage. Thorndike developed a principle he Although classical and operant conditioning are important types of learning, people learn a large portion of what they know through observation. Learning by observation differs from classical and operant conditioning because it does not require direct personal experience with stimuli, reinforcers, or punishers. Learning by observation involves simply watching the behavior of another person, called a model, and later imitating the models behavior. Both children and adults learn a great deal through observation and imitation.
The Essay on Simple Stimulus Learning
In this paper, this author will analyze forms of simple stimulus learning. He will examine the concept of habituation, analyze factors that affect perceptual learning, and examine the effects of stimulus exposure. He will give some examples of real life situations and the application of simple stimulus in those situations. Definitions and explanations will be discussed and analyzed. According to ...
Young children learn language, social skills, habits, fears, and many other everyday behaviors by observing their parents and older children. Many people learn academic, athletic, and musical skills by observing and then With these three very important types of learning we can teach both humans and animals new skills. Teaching animals to do silly tasks that a human can perform is very possible. For instance teaching a
