Learning Classical and Operant Conditioning Learning The process

Learning Classical and Operant Conditioning

• Learning The process by which experience or practice results in a relatively permanent change in behavior or potential behavior. • Learning is not just “studying!” Psychologists define learning more broadly which covers classroom learning.

• Conditioning The acquisition of specific patterns of behavior in the presence of well defined stimuli for humans and animals as well.

• Classical Conditioning (Pavlovian conditioning) Type of learning in which a response naturally elicited by one stimulus comes to be elicited by a different, neutral stimulus. • Example You might become tense or anxious when you hear the kind of music that always precedes a frightening or startling scene during a scary film, because you have come to identify this music with such senses.

• Operant Conditioning (Instrumental Conditioning) type of learning selected, in which behaviors are emitted in the presence of specific stimuli to earn rewards or avoid punishment behaviors and are voluntary. • Example Teaching a dog to sit or heel on command is an example of operant learning.

• Discovers classical conditioning by accident. • A Russian physiologist who was studying the digestive system.

• Animals salivate when food is in front of them. • Pavlov inserted tubes in the dog’s mouth to measure how much saliva was produced when the dog was given food • Dog salivated before the food was in their mouths: the mere sight of food made them drool. In fact, they even drooled at the sound of the experimenters footsteps.

• WONDERED WHY? ? ? • Pavlov set off to make the dogs salivate when food was not present • He set up an experiment where he sounded a bell just before the food was brought in to the room • Hearing the bell many times right before it gets food Pavlov’s dog began to salivate as soon as the bell rang.

• Learned the bell signaled the appearance of food and their mouths watered on cue even if no food was present. • The dog had been conditioned to respond to new stimulus: The BELL normally does not cause salivation.