Chapter Six Learning

We have grown up with many forms of conditioning from your parents scolding us to when we watch TV commercials. This leads me to wonder is there one form of conditioning that works best? Classical conditioning is one large issue in learning which shows how people can have a conditioned response from a conditioned stimulus. Ivan Pavlov was the first to discover this reaction. He found that a normally unconditioned response from a unconditioned stimulus added to a conditioned response like salivating before eating can add that response to hearing the sound of a bell if the bell was rung the same time as the food was brought out. Later the food can be taken away and you will still salivate when you hear the bell. This is called acquisition. When the bell is rung without the smell of food over a matter of time the person or in Pavlov's case the dog would stop salivating. This is called extinction because the conditioned response is no more. There is an exception to this with something called spontaneous recovery which is when the conditioned stimulus has the effect of the conditioned response after extinction.


The other most known type of conditioning is operant conditioning which is based on reinforcement and punishment. There are positive and negative forms of punishment and reinforcement. Reinforcement increases the subject's behavior while punishment decreases the subject's behavior. If one is positive the subject is given something and if one is negative something is taken away from the subject. This type of conditioning has the famous Skinner Box which was invented by B. F. Skinner. This box gave out rewards which were assigned by a light and could be recorded without human contact. After looking at the different types of conditioning I am still unsure which form is best because each has a different approach which leads to different results.