Learning is a concept in which a person’s way of life is changed by way of experience. Learning is important is our developmental process. This is because we learn about what is right and what is wrong by personal experience or by parental guidance. Everything around us influences our thoughts and actions. Two types of learning are classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Each conditioning method has a distinct way of invoking a change in the behaviors and actions in a subject.
Conditioning is a method of changing a person’s behavior by giving them positive or negative reinforcement for every feat they make until they realize which actions cause rewards and which actions cause negative reactions. Classical conditioning, or Pavlovian conditioning, is a form of learning in which a subject learns to respond to a stimulus that unconsciously, when paired with another stimulus, causes an spontaneous response (Lilienfeld, 2014, p. 208). Operant conditioning, or instrumental conditioning, is creating a conditioned response through the use of consequences based on a subject’s behavior (Lilienfeld, 2014, p. 216). A subject receives positive or negative reinforcement or punishment to condition its behavior. Classical and operant conditioning are not the same because classical conditioning involves the association of two different stimuli to provoke a response from one of the two, while operant conditioning involves a form of participation in order to see a response to a certain stimulus. A phobia is an extreme fear or desire to avoid a specific person, place, or thing based on negative associations to said person, place, or thing. Phobias are developed by connecting an unconditioned stimulus to another stimulus that will eventually become what a person will attempt to evade, if not completely provoke fear in them. An example of a phobia would be the fear of heights, or acrophobia. A person could develop this kind of fear after watching a movie in which someone plunges to their death from a towering building. This relates to classical conditioning because seeing someone at a high elevation and watching them die from the fall will unconsciously condition the subject to associate heights with dying. Observational learning is a method of learning that does not require the need for physical interaction. It occurs when watching another subject’s actions or behaviors in order to elicit a particular response or behavior in the one observing. An example of observational learning is an article written by Barbi Law and Craig Hall. This article contains an experiment that they had conducted on a group of 188 golfers, ranging from young to old in age, amateur and professional skill levels, and how often they make use of observational learning to improve upon their physical and mental proficiency of the sport. They hypothesized that the more skilled golf players will make more of their use of observational learning than the less skilled players. Law and Hall determined the results of their experiment by developing statistics based on the players’ age, level of skill, the total number of years they have played golf, and their use of observational learning. What they found was that the younger aged golfers …show more content…
Negative punishment occurs when a certain stimulus is completely eliminated when the behavior conditioned to be reduced is elicited in order for it to occur less often. For example, a child is temporarily removed from their favorite class or activity because they were misbehaving (Prince 2013). In the case of the client who wants to stop biting her fingernails, a good way to prevent that action to occur again would be forcing her to place a dollar into a jar for every occurrence of her biting her …show more content…
Classical conditioning is particularly important because it teaches us how to react to diverse things in the world. Being fearful of getting tremendously hurt is a good example of classical conditioning. If we notice how much a bee sting hurts by a friend describing how it felt, we learn to fear bees, therefore leaving them alone when coming across one, which will shelter ourselves. Operant conditioning is just as important because it teaches us that every action performed follows a form of consequence, positive or negative. Negative and positive consequences make us recognize the difference from right or wrong. One example would be drinking alcohol. When we drink too much, we often feel sick. By this experience, we know that being sick is a form of negative punishment and because of that, we learn to not drink
Conditioning is a method of changing a person’s behavior by giving them positive or negative reinforcement for every feat they make until they realize which actions cause rewards and which actions cause negative reactions. Classical conditioning, or Pavlovian conditioning, is a form of learning in which a subject learns to respond to a stimulus that unconsciously, when paired with another stimulus, causes an spontaneous response (Lilienfeld, 2014, p. 208). Operant conditioning, or instrumental conditioning, is creating a conditioned response through the use of consequences based on a subject’s behavior (Lilienfeld, 2014, p. 216). A subject receives positive or negative reinforcement or punishment to condition its behavior. Classical and operant conditioning are not the same because classical conditioning involves the association of two different stimuli to provoke a response from one of the two, while operant conditioning involves a form of participation in order to see a response to a certain stimulus. A phobia is an extreme fear or desire to avoid a specific person, place, or thing based on negative associations to said person, place, or thing. Phobias are developed by connecting an unconditioned stimulus to another stimulus that will eventually become what a person will attempt to evade, if not completely provoke fear in them. An example of a phobia would be the fear of heights, or acrophobia. A person could develop this kind of fear after watching a movie in which someone plunges to their death from a towering building. This relates to classical conditioning because seeing someone at a high elevation and watching them die from the fall will unconsciously condition the subject to associate heights with dying. Observational learning is a method of learning that does not require the need for physical interaction. It occurs when watching another subject’s actions or behaviors in order to elicit a particular response or behavior in the one observing. An example of observational learning is an article written by Barbi Law and Craig Hall. This article contains an experiment that they had conducted on a group of 188 golfers, ranging from young to old in age, amateur and professional skill levels, and how often they make use of observational learning to improve upon their physical and mental proficiency of the sport. They hypothesized that the more skilled golf players will make more of their use of observational learning than the less skilled players. Law and Hall determined the results of their experiment by developing statistics based on the players’ age, level of skill, the total number of years they have played golf, and their use of observational learning. What they found was that the younger aged golfers …show more content…
Negative punishment occurs when a certain stimulus is completely eliminated when the behavior conditioned to be reduced is elicited in order for it to occur less often. For example, a child is temporarily removed from their favorite class or activity because they were misbehaving (Prince 2013). In the case of the client who wants to stop biting her fingernails, a good way to prevent that action to occur again would be forcing her to place a dollar into a jar for every occurrence of her biting her …show more content…
Classical conditioning is particularly important because it teaches us how to react to diverse things in the world. Being fearful of getting tremendously hurt is a good example of classical conditioning. If we notice how much a bee sting hurts by a friend describing how it felt, we learn to fear bees, therefore leaving them alone when coming across one, which will shelter ourselves. Operant conditioning is just as important because it teaches us that every action performed follows a form of consequence, positive or negative. Negative and positive consequences make us recognize the difference from right or wrong. One example would be drinking alcohol. When we drink too much, we often feel sick. By this experience, we know that being sick is a form of negative punishment and because of that, we learn to not drink