Question

Conditioning plays a large role in daily activities. This is true, whether it be in our personal or professional lives. It's interesting to see how these concepts come about without our realizing it.

Consider the following questions: How do classical conditioning procedures differ from operant conditioing procedures? How are they similar? Give a detailed example of each type of learning.

Answer 1

Classical and Operant conditioning are two essential concepts primal to behavioral psychology. Although both result in learning but the procedures are very different.

Represented by Ivan Pavlov, Classical conditioning is a formula that involves making an affiliation between a stimulus which is naturally existing and a previously neutral one. In his famous experiment,he found out that dogs started to salivate in response to a sound after the sound had often been matched with giving food. He realized that this was a acquired response. The classical conditioning process involves coupling a formerly neutral stimulus (such as the sound ) with an unconditioned stimulus (the taste of food).

The unconditioned stimulus automatically and naturally, as a response, triggers salivation to the food, which is known as the unconditioned response. After linking the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus, the former will start to arouse salivation as a response.Thus, the sound is recognized as the conditioned stimulus and salivation in response to the sound is recognized as the conditioned response.

First described by B. F. Skinner, in operant conditioning, learning relates to alterations in behavior due to outcome of experiences that happens after a response. Operant conditioning includes changing voluntary behaviors. To increase or decrease a behavior, Operant conditioning focuses on using either reinforcement or punishment respectively. An affiliation is defined between the behavior and the consequences due to that behavior through this process. For example, an instructor is trying to train a dog to get a ball. When the dog successfully  picks up the ball, the dog gets praise as a reward.and vice-versa. In time, the dog forms an alliance between his behavior of chasing and getting the ball and receiving the wanted reward.

Both the above conditioning are similar because they require forming alliance between behaviour and events in environment of an organism and are conducted by various general laws of association.