One of the major differences involves the types of behaviours that are conditioned. While classical conditioning is centred on involuntary, automatic behaviours, operant conditioning is focused on voluntary behaviours. It is important we view each conditioning technique in greater detail to gain a complete understanding of it. The first conditioning type we are to analyse is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a theory of learning founded by Ivan Pavlov, It is a way of learning through past association, he accidentally stumbled upon this theory as he was studying the digestive system of the dog and then applied it to human psychology.
In order to understand the theory, we must familiarise ourselves with the basic principles. (Martin, Carlson, Buskist, page 259). The unconditional stimulus is something that creates a natural and automatic reaction, like reflexive behaviour. For example, if you smell your favourite food cooking, you will automatically feel hungry. In this example, the smell of food is the unconditional stimulus.
After many trials of pairing, with the light or the bell, with the food, eventually the dogs began to associate being feed with the stimuli if the light or the bell. Upon making the association with the light or bell with the food, the dogs would then begin to salivate when the light turned on or when the bell was rung. The dogs had been conditioned to salivate at the sight of the light being turned on, or at the sound of a bell being rung. Pavlov’s discovery of conditioned reflexes led to the modern day theory of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning considers stimuli and response: unconditioned stimuli, unconditioned response, conditioned stimuli, and conditioned
Classical and Operant Conditioning Name Institution Date Classical and Operant Conditioning One of the ways human beings learn is by association. For instance, if an individual associate a given sound with a frightening outcome, hearing the sound might always trigger fear. It is also evident that when people repeat behaviors in a given context, the behaviors become part of the context (Myers, 2008). This aspect of associating behaviors with events has been explored in great depth in the classical and operant condition. In classical conditioning, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), conducted an experiment on the eating habits of dogs.
Classical conditioning entails a response that is evoked through the nervous system. The behavior is connected through one’s sensory perception (the five senses). Classical conditioning involves a learned response which is prompted unconsciously and usually involves some response of the autonomic nervous system (fear, sadness, joy, anxiety, etc.). Classical conditioning is the technique of pairing a controlled stimulus with an uncontrolled stimulus to evoke a response. Pavlov’s dog is a most famous example.
This Behavioural Model classifies three different learning processes: classical conditioning - learning through association, operant conditioning - learning through reinforcement and the social learning theory - learning through observing and imitating others. Behaviour that is learnt through any of these three processes can be either maladaptive or adaptive. Classical conditioning is a basic form of learning which involves associating conditioned and unconditioned stimuli by pairing them together. Pavlov first demonstrated the use of classical conditioning in 1927 with the example of a dog’s salivation reflex. While taking accurate measurements from the dog about how much it was salivating; Pavlov noticed that the dog would salivate at the sight of food as well as tasting it.
Instrumental Conditioning University of Phoenix Psych 550 Professor Maya Aleksic Conditioning involves learning association between an individual and events that occur in his or her environment. Two important theories of learning by conditioning are Classical and Operant conditioning. Classical conditioning involves the pairing of some neutral (conditioned) stimulus (e.g. tone, sound) with an unconditioned stimulus (e.g. light) to naturally evoke a learning response (Bradizza, C.M., Stasiewkz, 2009).
Behaviourism as a science accounts for behaviour in terms of observable acts. It focuses on a basic kind of learning called conditioning, which involves associations between environmental stimuli and responses, sometimes called stimulus-response (“S-R”) psychology. To explain human behaviour two types of conditioning are used: classical and operational conditioning. The classical conditioning has been described by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) as an outcome of experiments with dogs. He studied the salivation in dogs and concluded that a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus to a dog and make it salivate, when it is paired with food.
A Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov called what was taking place in similar situations conditioning. Classical conditioning is one example of learning. Learning can be defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from experience. Pavlov discovered this type of learning on accident. It was around the turn of the century and Pavlov had been studying the process of digestion.
There will also be more organic or biological processes looked at such as cognitive processes. Behaviourism is a strands of theory generally derived by two people Pavlov and his earlier writings on conditioned reflexes and Skinner who’s work consisted of operant conditioning (Hogg, A. Vaughan, C:2005 p21). One of Pavlov’s most famous theories is the experiment dogs involving their saliva production around the time of feeding, this is conditioning at it’s most basic level, as it involves dogs not humans results can have their limitations. However, he found that the dogs started to produce saliva at feeding time, which he called an unconditioned response. But, he also noticed that when the person who usually fed them was present they started to produce saliva.