Florent Lefortier answered
The two types of conditioning (which is a type of learning) are classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
What Is Classical Conditioning?
Essentially, classical conditioning occurs when the response to a stimulus is natural and involuntary. The most famous example is of Pavlov’s dog.
When a dog is presented with food, the natural response is to salivate. The dog can’t help drooling: It’s just the way its body reacts.
One day, the physician Pavlov (pictured) noticed that his dog had started salivating when it saw the lab technician who fed it each day - the dog had become conditioned to expect food when the man appeared, and so it reacted the way it would to the actual food.
There was another experiment done on a little boy called Albert. The researchers wanted to see if they could condition him to fear fluffy things.
Over a period of weeks, they let Albert play with a selection of fluffy objects (toys, scarves, a rabbit, etc.) and, shortly after he’d been presented with the fluffy thing, they hit two metal poles together behind him to make a loud and frightening noise. Albert’s natural response was to cry.
After a while, Albert began to cry as soon as he saw the fluffy object, because he’d been conditioned to associate it with loud noises. The researchers never managed to undo this association, and Albert grew up fearing fluffy things.
What Is Operant Conditioning?
Operant conditioning is like classical conditioning, only conscious. You’re using operant conditioning when you train your dog to do tricks, and your parents are using it when they ground you for bad behavior.
Operant conditioning is based around reward and punishment. For example, if you give your dog a treat whenever he rolls over, he will then roll over because he knows he’ll get a treat.
What Is Classical Conditioning?
Essentially, classical conditioning occurs when the response to a stimulus is natural and involuntary. The most famous example is of Pavlov’s dog.
When a dog is presented with food, the natural response is to salivate. The dog can’t help drooling: It’s just the way its body reacts.
One day, the physician Pavlov (pictured) noticed that his dog had started salivating when it saw the lab technician who fed it each day - the dog had become conditioned to expect food when the man appeared, and so it reacted the way it would to the actual food.
There was another experiment done on a little boy called Albert. The researchers wanted to see if they could condition him to fear fluffy things.
Over a period of weeks, they let Albert play with a selection of fluffy objects (toys, scarves, a rabbit, etc.) and, shortly after he’d been presented with the fluffy thing, they hit two metal poles together behind him to make a loud and frightening noise. Albert’s natural response was to cry.
After a while, Albert began to cry as soon as he saw the fluffy object, because he’d been conditioned to associate it with loud noises. The researchers never managed to undo this association, and Albert grew up fearing fluffy things.
What Is Operant Conditioning?
Operant conditioning is like classical conditioning, only conscious. You’re using operant conditioning when you train your dog to do tricks, and your parents are using it when they ground you for bad behavior.
Operant conditioning is based around reward and punishment. For example, if you give your dog a treat whenever he rolls over, he will then roll over because he knows he’ll get a treat.
